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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL
GENEALOGY COLLECTION

A DISCOURSE

PRONOUNCED

ON THE INAUGURATION OF THE NEW IIALL

March 11, 1872,

No. 820 Spruce Street,
Philadelphia.

JOHN WILLIAM WALLACE,

PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY.

TARTS OMITTED IN THE DELIVERY BEING HERE INSERTED.

P IIILADELPHI A:

. PRINTED BY S II EE MAY & CO.

1812.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2015

https://archive.org/details/discoursepronoun00wall_0

OH N

BY WHOSE LIBERALITY, CONSTANT THOUGH CONCEALED,

AND

BY WHOSE JUDICIOUS COUNSELS

THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA HAS BEEN
LONG AND LARGELY BENEFITED,

ORDAN, JR.

THIS DISCOURSE

3s Juscribcb

PREFACE.

For some years past it had become obvious that the collec-
tions of the Historical Society of this State were increasing so
fast that they could not be well accommodated in the rooms of
the Atbenasura, which the Society has occupied for. the last
quarter of a century. And the managers of the Pennsylvania
-Hospital having placed at the command of the Society, in a
very handsome manner, and for a long term of years, their
building on Spruce Street, known as the Picture JIouse, over-
looking their spacious and well-kept gardens on the south, it
was gratefully accepted by the Society. A sum' of SI 0.000 being
cheerfully subscribed upon the intimation of the Secretary of
the Society, Mr. Ward, that it was needed, preparations were
immediately made, on an extensive scale, to adapt the building
to the uses of the new occupants; very large and securely built
fire-proof closets being a matter which engaged especially the
attention of the Society. The whole house, which it required
nearly a year to complete, having been finished in February,
1872, the valuable collections of the Society were transferred to
it under the care of the Librarian, the Reverend Mr. Shrigley,
and of Messrs. Spencer Bonsai, J. Heacock, and W. J. Buck,
his assistants in the matter. This responsible and laborious
work being accomplished, a committee, composed of Mr. John
Jordan, Jr., Mr. William Duane, and Mr. John T. Lewis, was
appointed to inform the members of the transfer; the gentle-
men who composed this committee, as it providentially hap-
pened, having been the very same who composed a committee
twenty-five years ago to notify to the members the then transfer
of the Society’s possessions to the Athenaeum, which it had now
left. To signalize more impressively a step which seemed to
be a great one in the progress of the Society onward, it was
resolved to inaugurate the hall in form; and the President of
the Society was requested to deliver an address of inauguration.

Accordingly, on Monday evening the lltli of March, 1872,
this being one of the evenings of the stated meetings of the
Society, a large and elegant company assembled in the new
hall. And Vice-President Horatio Gates Jones having opened
the meeting, with appropriate remarks, the President of the
Society proceeded to address it in the following discourse; the
delivery of the parts of which spoken occupied about one hour.

On its conclusion, Mr. John Welsh moved the thanks of the
Society to the President, and these were unanimously given.

B. H. Coates, M.D., then proceeded to read a poetic address,
for which the thanks of the Society were also given.

Among the very agreeable incidents of the evening, were the
presence of a committee from the Delaware Historical Society, —
the Bev. Mr. Hinckley, Dr. Bush, and Dr. Askew, of Wilming-
ton; as also the presence of the Centennial Commissioners, that
evening, in the city. For both, seats of distinction had been
provided, and both were introduced to the Society; the former
by Mr. J. A/McAllister, the latter by Col. James Boss Snowden.

The new Historical Hall has been thus correctly described in
one of the daily papers of Philadelphia:

“The rooms have been arranged excellently for their pur-
poses. There is a vestibule eighteen feet wide on the lower
floor, and immediately in the rear a room twenty feet by twenty-
six, having on each side other rooms twenty feet square. On
the right side of the vestibule there is a tire-proof room, ten feet
by twenty, for the deposit of heavy articles of value, while oppo-
site this on the left side rises the staircase leading to the second
story. The northern wall of the building, however, is not flush
with the outer wall of the lot on Spruce Street, but sets back
about ten feet, allowing for a future removal of this outer wall
to the distance mentioned, and to a line on a level with the
fronts of the houses, above Ninth and below Eighth Street.
This change, it is thought, will not be long delayed, as an act
was passed at the last session of the legislature permitting such
setting back of the wall.

“The second floor of the building consists of one long room,
running from east to west, a length of sixty-eight feet, and from
north to south in the centre, about forty-two feet. It is this
width over the vestibule and entry below, and over a bay win-
dow eighteen feet wide and six feet deep on the south side.
Beyond the lines of these, the room is twenty feet wide. The
space occupied by the fire-proof below is also taken up by one

/ • ' •• •' r'

above. These have both double iron doors, iron shutters to
their windows, are fitted up with shelving and drawers, and have
full ventilating properties. The fire-proof chamber up stairs is
intended to contain valuable manuscripts, &c.; &c. The ceiling
of the library proper is eighteen feet high.

‘‘Those of our citizens who recollect the old building will call
to mind the fact that the upper story, that in which the paint-
ing of West was formerly exhibited, was a room extending in
length north and south over the vestibule, and to the width of
the bay window above described. This was its entire limit. It
will be seen, therefore, that it has been enlarged with wings,
whose united measurement is fifty by twenty feet.

“The outer portion of the new structure and such of the old
as has been renewed, lias been built with brick and mortar in
imitation of the old brickwork. Except from its newness it
■would require more than a hurried glance to distinguish be-
tween them.”-

Philadelphia,

March 25th, 1872.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

With peculiar pleasure — with pleasure arising from more
than a single source — do I welcome you, Fellow-Members
of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, this night, to
this new hall.

I welcome you to it with pleasure, in the first place,
because in the article of comfort, convenience, and elegance,
it far exceeds an}' place of meeting which we have hitherto
enjoyed. Firm in its structure; central in its situation; com-
modious in the distribution of its numerous apartments;
looking out along the whole line where our view chiefly
turns, upon the fair face of nature, and bringing from the
warmth and breezes of the south, those influences which
most contribute to health and cheerfulness; well ventilated;
well warmed; with repositories of unusual security and size
for our more precious possessions, I can indeed think of no
spot whatever, in all the length and breadth of Philadelphia,
which, if we had had our choice, we would more willingly
have selected for the seat of our corporate presence and
councils, and as the place where most advantageously to
collect and most attractively to show forth our historic
treasures.

I welcome you to this hall with pleasure on yet different
grounds. I see in the arrangements ’ now happily accom-
plished, evideuce of an interest in the history of our state
and city more wide than, till this day, some have been will-
ing to believe in ; and a proof that the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, which less than fifty years ago was but a
thought — “ a small seminal principle,” “a little speck scarce
visible in the mass of our citv’s interests ” — has <n*own to
“ the strength of a well-formed body;” and that by the pro-

' r * j

gressive increase of improvement — the liberality of the liv-
ing even more than the benefactions of the dead — it is be-
coming an institution worthy of our state and city; this city,
which was the birthplace of our mighty nation, and on
whose soil the majestic edifice of American Constitutional
Liberty, was reared; this state to which the Valley Forge
and Gettysburg give, forever, fame. The roomy building in
which we have assembled; the treasures of history where-
with it is filled; the invested funds which now in part give
support to our objects; the constant presence in our halls of
numerous members; the liberal offerings in money from
those who, engaged in the active pursuits of life yet partake
of none of the mistaken and illiberal spirit which might re-
gard our objects as narrow and without use; all demonstrate
that our Society, whose existence seemed so long precarious,
and which until even late years required much and tender
nurture, stands at length alone; and rejoicing in its own
strength, repays the wisdom with which it was formed, and
the care by which it was so faithfully brought up.

To you, gentlemen, honored founders of our Society,* the
spectacle which you behold this night must be a delightful
one indeed !

To you, sir,f to whose taste and skill and experience in
the art of building we have been so greatly indebted, and
to whose daily and careful supervision, through ten long
months, we so largely owe the handsome, complete, and
thorough manner in which the reconstruction of this edifice
has been accomplished, the sight of it, at last so happily
achieved, and so much to the satisfaction and advantage of
all, must be, I am sure, a spectacle uo less delightful.

Hearly half a century has passed since the Historical

* The speaker here directed his discourse to the two surviving founders of
the Society, Georoe Washington Smith, Esq., and B. K. Coates, M. D.,
for whom seats of distinction had been provided.

f The speaker here addressed himself to Mr. Richard L Nicholson, who,
from the month of May, 1871, had very generously superintended the work
of adapting the old Picture House of the Hospital to the uses of the His-
torical Society; remaining in the city during the oppressive heat of July
and August in order to do so.

Society of Pennsylvania was formed. Of its founders*
two, still living* in honor among us, alone survive. The
occasion invites us, while we can yet do so, to recall a
little our annals, that we who preserve the history of every
other thing, may not be left at last without a history our-
selves.

When we look at our newly admitted Western States, and
see that scarce any one of them is received into the Union
before a “ historical society ” springs up within it, we are at
some loss to understand why full two hundred years should
have passed before our people sought, through corporate
effort, to preserve and illustrate the history of our state and
city. Isay “ two hundred years;” for although the charter
to Mr. Penn bore date in 1681, yet for sixty years before,
Pennsylvania had been settled by Christian people. Indeed
so firm and aiicient were certain of these settlements, that
notwithstanding the royal charter, Mr. Penn, it has been
held, took subject to their pre-existent claim.

One cause why no state historical society ever existed
among us until late times, may be found, I suppose, in the
diversity of nations which tilled our early province. Unlike
the composition of primitive Massachusetts or Virginia —
where all were English and all of one religion — the early
population of Pennsylvania was singularly heterogeneous.
In our province, the people of three different nations — Finns,
Swedes, and Hollanders — were here in force when Mr.
Penn landed with the people of yet a fourth, — his colony
of British. Hollanders had made war and conquered
Swedes; the British had made war and conquered Hollan-
ders. The people on our soil therefore were not only differ-
ent people, but they had been warring ones, and hostile.
Nor was this diversity an ethnological one alone. Religious
oppositions marked it when national ones began to disappear.
The English who came here with Penn were of the Society of
Friends. Scarcely had they landed before George Keith threw
among them brands which involved the Society in flames of
discord. With the death, in 1718, of William Penn, the
colony passed to his sons, who belonged to the. establishment.
And henceforth most of the important people who came here

were members of the Church of England. So that in 1761,
when Mr. Burke put together his well-known 14 Account of
the European Settlements in’ America” this variety of na-
tions and religions was the feature which struck him most
when he describes our province. “ Pennsylvania,” he says,
“ is inhabited by upwards of 250,000 people, half of whom
are Germans, Swedes, or ‘Dutch.” That same wonderful
observer — who notes that in 1750 there emigrated to our
province 4317 Germans, while of British and Irish but 1000
arrived here, and admits that it was a right policy to en-
courage the importation of foreigners into the colony — yet
complains that foreigners were still left foreigners, and were
likely to continue so for many generations ; for that they
had schools taught in their own language, with books and
even .the newspapers so printed. And he inferred “ that
there was no appearance of their blending and becoming
one people with the subjects of Great Britain.”

Nor did our diversities in religion strike him less. “ Here
you see,” he says, “Quakers, Churchmen, Calvinists, Metho-
dists, Menists, Moravians, Independents, Anabaptists, and
Dumplers, a sort of German sect that live in something like
a religious society; wear long beards, and a habit resembling
that of friars. In short,” he says, “ the diversity of people, re-
ligions, nations, and languages here is prodigious.”*

To crown the whole, we had a municipal organization
alike widespread and disintegrated. From 1701, when Phila-
delphia was incorporated, we had one “ city,” its limits
small and fixed, around which, till 1854 (when all were con-
solidated), “districts,” “boroughs,” and “townships,” were
growing; twenty-eight municipal corporations, I think, in
all; all, iu a good degree, separated from each other, and
all from it; some near, some far off; some populous, some
occupied still by farms.

Thus it was; and less than “ mountains interposed ” made,
so far as consociation for our objects was concerned, enemies
of people, who had else, perhaps “ like kindred drops been
mingled into one.”

* Burke’s Works, Boston edition, vol. ix, p 345.

Indeed to those of us born here, and familiar with the
national, religions, and municipal complexion of Philadel-
phia, these striatures in our society were quite visible, I
think, till within a few years. The large influx of new
elements, the consolidation of our various local governments,
and the mixture and changes brought about by marriages
and new generation, have, in this day, largely obliterated
them; though some of their effects still remain.

But whatever may have been the cause, the fact is as I
have said. Prior to 1824 no historical society existed
within this state. As our thoughtful citizens followed to
the grave those men who had been actors in the scenes of
which our city in 1774, and for twenty-six years that fol-
lowed, had been so much the theatre, it cannot be doubted
that some such institution must have often been desired.
As far back indeed as 1815, the American Philosophical So-
ciety had engrafted on its body a Historical and Literary
Committee. But the efforts of this committee were limited,
and the results of its formation small.

The origin of our own Society I learn was on this wise:

In 1824 a gentleman of our city, himself honorably asso-
ciated with names historic in the state and province,* hap-
pened, while visiting Yew York, to be thrown into relations
of intimacy with the late Be Witt Clinton, then governor
of that state. The Yew York Historical Society was at the
time a subject of public interest in our sister city. Mr.
Clinton’s regard for the institution wTas always warm and
active. He spoke much of it to his visitor; unfolded its
plans and objects, expatiated eloquently on its prospects and
usefulness. Our friend, upon returning to Philadelphia, sug-
gested to certain citizens the formation of a similar society
among ourselves. The suggestion was well received. Min-
utes of a historical association, kept with admirable order,
by its first secretary, now come to our aid. Thus they read :

At a meeting of gentlemen, native citizens of Pennsylvania,
favorable to the formation of a Society for the purpose of eluci-
dating the history of the state, held on the 2d day of December,
1824, at the house of Thomas I. Wharton,

* George Washington Smith, Esq.

Roberts Yaux was called to the chair, and George Washing-
ton Smith appointed Secretary.

There were present :

Roberts Yaux, Stephen Duncan,

Thomas I. Wharton, William Rawle, Jr.,

Dr. Benjamin H. Coates, Dr. Caspar Wistar,
George Washington Smith.

After an interchange of the views of those present it was, on
motion of T. I. Wharton,

Resolved, That it is expedient to form a society for the pur-
pose of elucidating the history of Pennsylvania.

Resolved , That a committee be appointed to prepare a consti-
tution and by-laws for the government of the said society.

Whereupon, Thomas I. Wharton, Dr. Coates, and G. W. Smith
were appointed a committee.

Adjourned to meet on the 27th day of December, 1824.

At a meetingheld pursuant to the adjournment, “present
fifteen persons,” Roberts Yaux, ever prominent in useful
works among us, still, of course, in the chair, and G. W.
Smith, Secretary, the committee reported a draft of a con-
stitution and by-laws, which was approved. The meeting
then adjourned till the 29th of January, 1825.

On that day the Society met again, when —

“A list of the names of gentlemen desirous of joining the
society was read, and on motion, the persons applying for mem-
bership were elected and placed on the secretary’s roll.”

This honored roll preserves for our grateful recollection
the following names, well known, every one of them, in our
city’s history :

William Rawle,
Roeerts Yaux,
Joseph Hopkinson,
Joseph Reed,

Thomas C. James,
John Sergeant,
Thomas I. Wharton,
Thomas H. White,
Caspar Wistar, 2d,

George Washington Smith,
Gerard Ralston,

William Mason Walmsley,
William M. Meredith,
Daniel B. Smith,

William Rawle, Jr.,
Charles J. Ingersoll,
Edward Bettle,

Tiiomas McKean Pettit,

Benjamin H. Coates.

“Nineteen members,” says the record, “all of them citi-
zens of Philadelphia.” It ay as then resolved, that the con-
stitution and by-laws be in force from and after the 28th of
February, 1825, and that an election for officers for that
year should be held on the day named.

On that day the Society7 met again, and proceeded to an
election, when the following gentlemen were elected:

President.

WILLIAM RAWLE.

Vice-Presidents.

Roberts Yaux, Thomas Duncan.

Corresponding Secretary. Recording Secretary.

Daniel B Smith. G. W. Smith.

Thus, less than fifty years ago was the good seed sown.
Behold the tree, the flowers and the fruit !

The first place of regular meeting of the new association
was in the rooms of the American Philosophical Society,
then as now on the west side of Fifth Street below Chestnut,
and looking upon the State House grounds. Everything
contemplated appears to have been upon the most modest
scale; since the whole expense of fire and candles for the
year was fixed at $50. In this quiet way of usefulness, the
Society proceeded for nearly twenty years. But if it was
small in numbers, unimposing in possessions, without a
habitation of its own, it was not less confident in hope, less
zealous in endeavor, less fruitful in good works. Books
were brought together. Manuscripts were sought for and
rescued from destruction. A scheme of large usefulness
was planned and marked out by its accomplished President;
standing committees to give every part of it effect were ap-
pointed,* and the glories of this present day, sccenis decora
alia futuris , were beheld not dimly. The first volume of
our published “Memoirs,” deemed of late by us worthy of
republication, filled as it chiefly is with addresses and papers
made or presented within the first two years of our existence,
shows with what effect our early members labored.

During the twenty years that our members remained

* See Appendix, No. I.

under the protecting shadow of the American Philosophical
Society, we enjoyed all the advantages which the spacious
and well-tilled apartments of that institution could afford us.
But we were near the Hall of Independence. The spirit of
1776 began to rise. Inferior relation of any sort was not
agreeable to some of our members, and in 1844, not without
opposition from others, we departed from the ancient pre-
cincts in which our infancy and youth were passed. Our
new quarters were in a room in the second story of a house
then JSTo. 115, now 211 South Sixth Street, much humbler
than our former ones, but, while we paid for them, exclu-
sively our own. The new arrangements were still upon the
modest scale suited to our quarters. The committee who
had obtained the room were “ directed to procure a book-
case of size sufficient to hold the collection of books, &c., a
carpet, table, chairs, and other necessary furniture, and to
put the room in a proper state for being occupied, 'provided
that the cost did not exceed §100.”

As I look around at these beautiful and well-filled rooms,
and remember that we have laid out §15,000, and yet get
back, we feel, more than the value of every cent expended,
I exclaim involuntarily: “ Excellent committee, if you ac-
complished, on these terms, the duties with which you were
intrusted !”

Our residence in the new abode was short. In about three
years — the present Athcnreum, on Sixth Street, being com-
pleted— we transferred ourselves to the upper rooms of it ;
and there we have remained — a term of five and twenty
years— happy years they have been, too — until our transfer
to this commodious place in which we now first meet.

In all this term, of near fifty years — from the foundation
of our Society till this da}" — we have had no assistance from
the state, whose honor in the past we seek to preserve in
perpetual lustre; nor any from the city, equally interested
with the state in supporting our endeavors. To private
liberality, rarely in large sums, but constant and from many
sources, and always unostentatiously rendered, we are in-
debted for all that we have about us. We have 600 mem-
bers; a library of 12,000 volumes; a collection of near

80,000 pamphlets, of which 70,000, the bequest of Mr. Fah-
nestock, lie carefully stored in boxes till such time as we
can bind, arrange, and display them ; a gallery of 65 por-
traits, and of 12 historical pictures; numerous engravings ; and
manuscripts — I may say innumerable — including the collec-
tions of William Penn and of several of his descendants at
Stoke, in England; recently presented to us by some of our
liberal members, who had secured them at a price of §4000.
Our building fund amounts to §12,775; our publication fund
to $17,000; our binding fund to §3500; our life-membership
fund to $7000.

Such has been the history, such is now the present con-
dition of our Society. It well deserves to exist and to grow,
for there is no state, I think, in which such a society can
find themes more worthy to engage it. 1 pass by the history
of our province for more than fifty years prior to the arrival
of Penn ; though that early record is filled with deeds of
adventure and with experience of hardship; distinguished
by acts of benevolence and by councils of wisdom. I keep
within the limits known to all. And certainly I need not
recall to this assemblage that from this region the light of
letters first shone forth to all the Middle Colonies in the
establishment of the printing press;* that from Philadel-
phia first, on this wide continent, came the proposition to
print in English the Holy Scriptures and to accompany
them by the Book of Common Prayer ;f that in Philadel-
phia, too, were asserted — -first asserted on the face of the round
world — the rights of the press against the arbitrary control
of Government and again, at a later date, when arbitrary
power sought to exercise itself through courts of justice, was
proclaimed — first, again, on the face of the round world§— a
principle in the law of libel, “as then,” says David Paul
Brown, || “asserted nowhere, but which now protects every
publication in much of our Union ; a principle which English

* A.D. 1G85; see an Address delivered at the celebration by the New York-
Historical Society, of the 200th Anniversary of the Birthday of Mr. William.
Bradford, May 20th, 18G3, p. 2G.

t A.D. 1G87-8 ; lb. p. 109. > % A.D. 1GS9; lb. p. 49.

\ A.D. 1092; lb. p. 55. || The Forum, vol. i, p. 281.

judges after the struggles of the great Whig Chief Justice
and Chancellor, Lord Camden, through his whole career,
and of the brilliant declaimer, Mr. Erskine, were unable to
reach, and which, at a later day became established in Eng-
land only by the enactment of Mr. Fox’s libel-bill in Parlia-
ment itself.” In Philadelphia, therefore, was the liberty of
the pres3 first asserted and successfully maintained. May
that liberty be ever a virtuous freedom ! — the freedom where-
with the truth makes us free— and he rescued from the base
licentiousness which now, too widely through the land,
usurps a sacred name, and threatens, more than every other
thing:, to rob us of the blessings of our rich inheritance!

Other commonwealths and distant countries glory in their
schools. How far were any in advance of Pennsylvania?
Let our provincial records tell. They show us* that

“At a council held in this city, the 2Gth of the 10th month,
1683, the governor and provincial council having taken into
their serious consideration the great necessity that there is for
a schoolmaster for the instruction and sober education of youth
in the town of Philadelphia, sent for Enoch Flower, an inhabit-
ant of said town, who for twenty years past hath been exercised
in that care and employment in England ; to whom having
communicated their mind he embraced it upon the following
terms :

To learn to read English, . .... 4s. by the quarter.

“ “ “ and write, . . . 6s. “ “

“ “ “ write, and cast accounts, 8s. “ 11

For boarding a scholar ; that is to say. diet, wash-
ing, lodging, and schooling, .... £10 for one whole year.

Has the public-school system of any day ever equalled
what this province proposed and what the schoolmaster of
16£3 “ embraced” — boarding the scholar, that is to say, diet,
washing, lodging, and schooling by the whole year !

Nor was the effort of our province directed to the estab-
lishment of schools for the humbler branches of education,
only; for reading, writing, and casting of accounts. In the
very foundation of our city, in the first moments that they

* 1 Minutes of the Provincial Council, p. 36.

came here, our ancestors were engaged with the whole sub-
ject of education. On the 17th of the 11th month, 1683,*
we find it

“Proposed, that care be taken about the learning and in-
struction of youth, to wit , a school of arts and sciences.”

Our ancestors deemed it impossible, as you perceive, to
separate, without an injury to both, the humbler sorts of
education from the higher and more elegant branches of
knowledge. In their estimation, “ the two were as mutually
dependent — as necessary, to each other’s existence and pros-
perity— as the ocean and the streams which feed it; the
ocean which supplies the quickening principle of the
streams; the streams which in turn pour forth their united
tribute to the common reservoir.” They felt that “ schools
of arts and sciences” — colleges and universities — “furnish
and propagate the seeds of knowledge for common schools,
and that these, in turn, transfer their more thrifty plants to
the more highly cultivated gardens. ”f

At the time when these laws were proposed, A.D. 16S3,
there was scarcely a house built beyond our river-line, and
along that line but few which were not of the humblest
order. So far was Pennsylvania in advance of most of the
provinces around it !

]^or was the civility of our province confined to efforts in
this direction. The difficult subject of finance — the power
of that system which we call the credit system — a system

* 1 Minutes of the Provincial Council, 38.

f See the speech of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, delivered in the House of
Representatives, at Harrisburg, March 10th, 1838, in favor of a bill to
establish a School of Arts in the city of Philadelphia and to endow the
colleges and academies of Pennsylvania.

It is worth noting that the School of Arts and Sciences “proposed in
Philadelphia ” in 1083, was actually established. Gabriel Thomas, who
lived in this country about lifteen years, states in his “ Historical! Account
of Pennsylvania,” &c., printed in 1098, that in Philadelphia “are several
good schools of learning for youth, in order to the attainment of arts and
sciences, as also reading, writing, &c.” What exactly the “arts and sci-
ences” were, is not now so easily ascertained. The “decorative” ones,
as we term them, couid not largely, one would say, have prevailed in
a colony of Friends. The useful sort were apparently well cultivated.

■

deemed one of our own times chiefly — had already unfolded
itself to their comprehensive minds. On the 7th of the 12th
month, 1688-9, at “a council in the Council Room,” Gov-
ernor Blackwell presiding, the provincial minutes give us
this curious record :*

“The petition of Robert Turner, John Tissic, Thomas Budd,
Robert Ewer, Samuel Carpenter, and John Fuller, was read,
setting forth their design of setting up a Bank for Money;
and requesting encouragement from the governor and council
for their proceeding therein.

“The governor acquainted them that some things of that
nature had been proposed and dedicated to the proprietor^ by
himself, out of Xew England, to which he believed that he
should receive his answer by the first shipping hither out of
England. Yet withall acquainting them that he did know no
reason why they might not give their personal bills to such as
would take them as money, to pass, as merchants usually did,
bills of exchange.”

Here we see apparently a number of men — the “ first
merchants” of that day — applying to the governor and
council — the legislature, I suppose, of the time — for encour-
agement from it, in a design which they had of setting up a
hank for money; that is to say, applying for a bank charter. J

It is noteworthy, too, that Governor Blackwell seems to
have anticipated the day of “chemicals” and other arts of
forgers, for in giving the petitioners his sanction to their
scheme, he adds that

“It might be suspected that such as usually clipped or coined
money would be apt to counterfeit their bills , unless more than
ordinary care were taken to prevent it.”§

* 1 Minutes of the Provincial Council, 193.

f Mr. Penn, of course. Governor Blackwell was his deputy.

+ It looks a little as if these petitioners for a bank had had some slight
design, kept in latency perhaps, to make the new bills a “legal tender.”
It will be observed, at least, that Governor Blackwell informs them that
he saw no reason “ why they might not give their personal bills to such as
would take them as money , to pass, as merchants usually did bills of ex-
change.”

\ Here, again, we see the governor distinguishing sharply between
“money” and “bills.” The editor of the excellent “ money articles ” of
the Ledger owes his memory a tribute.

“ Friends,5’ too, though we chiefly were, — giving to him
who would take our coat our cloak also, and with him who
would compel us to go a mile, going twain, — it is yet re-
markable how well some of our early legislators understood
the limitations under which “the School of the Mount”
doubtless meant to teach its rules. Seeking peace and ensu-
ing it, they still knew full well that preparedness for war, was
no bad means to secure the blessed end. In 1G88, when the
abdication of James II, and the accession of the house of
Orange, threatened to involve England in a war with E ranee,
our colon}’ at once bethought itself how best it should in-
spire the bosom of Xing Louis with Christian dispositions
in case he thought of coming here. The opinion of William
Markham, how best to do it, — a cousin of Mr. Penn, and at
one time his lieutenant here, — remains of record:

“My opinion is that we ought to have our arms as well fixed
in-time of peace as war. . . . And whether war be come or not,
I always keep my own arms prepared.”

A sage sentiment! never better expressed by any one in
other provinces, and which Washington himself did but
improve and point in his memorable apothegms of 1793,
when the same France, impious and revolutionary, was
involving the earth in war and making nations quake with
fear :

“If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it.
If we desire to secure peace, it must be known that we are, at
all times, ready for war.”

But I cannot dwell upon these very early times. It is the
misfortune of Pennsylvania that her provincial history lui3
never yet been written. Some who have tried to tell it, have
had no sufficient knowledge, and others have wanted that
genius and taste which was essential for their office, and
without which no knowledge of fact will ever make a his-
torical work attractive. Thus to most who study them, our
pre-revolutionary annals are a dreary waste, diversified
chiefly by quarrels between our governors and their as-
semblies and by the feuds of provincial' parties; one side of

them no better sometimes than a provincial faction. Yet
beneath all these there lies, I apprehend, a better history;
one which, if written with a comprehensive view and a phil-
osophic spirit — with remembrance that “ history is a high
name and imports productions of a high order”* — would be
to Pennsylvanians a subject both of instruction and pride.

The most impressive account that we have of old Phila-
delphia and our province comes to ns in passing notices from
the other side of the Atlantic. In that remarkable work to
which I have already alluded, published in 1761, and entitled
“An Account of the European Settlements in America” —
a work which, if not wholly from the pen of Mr. Burke, we
have reason to believe was largely put together from records
that were — nothing in the whole survey of the British Prov-
inces seems to have seized his attention so vividly as our
own city and our own province. Thus he writes of Phila-
delphia :f

“ There arc in this city a great number of very wealthy mer-
chants, which is no ways surprising when one considers the
great trade which it carries on with the English, French, Span-
ish, and Dutch colonics in America; with the Azores, the Cana-
ries, and the Madeira Islands; with Great Britain and Ireland,
with Spain, Portugal, and Holland, and the great profits which
are made in many branches of this commerce. Beside the
quantity of all kinds of the produce of this province which is
brought down the rivers Delaware and Schuylkill . . . the
Dutch employ between eight and nine thousand wagons, drawn
'each by four horses, in bringing the produce of their farms to
this market. In the year 1749, 303 vessels entered inwards at
this port and 291 cleared outwards.”

Such was this city one hundred and eleven or more years
ago. Describing our province, he says:

“There is no part of British America in a more growing con-
dition. In some years more people have transported themselves
into Pennsylvania than into all the' other settlements together.

* Daniel Webster, Address before the New York Historical Society, Feb-
ruary 23d, 1852, p. 5.

f Burke's Works, Boston ed., 1839, vol. ix, p. 349.

In 1729, 6208 persons came to settle here, as passengers or ser-
vants, four-fifths of whom, at least, were from Ireland. In
short, this province has increased so greatly from the time of its
first establishment that whereas lands were given by Mr. Penn,
at the rate of £20 for 1000 acres, reserving only a shilling for
every hundred acres for quit-rent, and this in some of the best
situated parts of the province; yet now (A.D. 1761), at a great
distance from navigation, land is granted at £12 the 100 acres,
and a quit-rent of four shillings reserved. And the land which
is near Philadelphia rents for 20 shillings the acre. In many
places, and at a distance of. several miles from that city, land
sells for twenty years’ purchase.”

And at a later date (A.D. 1774) in that comparative view
of this country, which he gives us in his speech upon “ Con-
ciliation with America,” when he describes the great and
growing population of the Colonies, the spirit with which
our people pursued agriculture, and the wealth which we
had drawn from the fisheries — the province of Pennsylvania
it is which has the foreground of the picture.* After his
splendid apostrophe to Lord Bathurst, letting fall the cur-
tain on that vision and resuming his comparative view ot
the increasing wealth of the Colonies at different dates, he
says :

“I will point out to your attention a particular instance yet,
in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704 that
province called for £11,459 in value of your commodities, native
and foreign. This was the wThole. What did it demand in
1772? Why, nearly fifty times as much; for in that year the
export to Pennsylvania was £507,909; nearly equal to the ex-
port trade of all the Colonies together in the first period.”

Surely a city and a colony which carried on such a com-
merce, which increased thus in population and in wealth,
was great and flourishing, and, on the whole, could not have
been unwisely governed. Prior to 1765 there were, indeed,
it would seem, no great complaints.

The very legislation under which we live — not a little of
it going back as far as the years 1704, 1705, &c. — some of it

* Burke’s Works, Boston ed., 1839, vol. ii, p. 28.

remaining in statutes dated specifically with those years,
and more of it incorporated into other acts of recent times —
this very legislation, I say, declares to us that superior
genius must have presided in some of our Colonial Assem-
blies. The men who have been able, in the infancy of
states, so to legislate as to govern them in centuries after,
when they have become populous and mighty, have been
but few; hardly more than have written epic poems, and
in genius, perhaps, not much inferior.

But why need I quote the history and speeches and legis-
lation of a century and more ago? ATe need but to look
about us to see what our old city and our old colony was in
men and in institutions.

There stands old Christ Church in Second Street ; finished
perhaps in 1744 — injured much by the work of 1836* — but
still one of the most imposing and beautiful ecclesiastical
erections of our city; whose well-tuned chime, put there
long anterior to the days of the Revolution, remained with-
out any rival in other cities till within more recent days,
and remains perhaps without successful rival now; whose
corporation along with a colonial sister, maintains, as an
adjunct and dependence, a great retreat for the aged poor
who by their sex have been least able to make provision for
themselves; this hospital, like the churches, founded far
back in colonial times. f 1

There, in Fifth Street, stands our Philadelphia Library,
begun in 1731, chartered in 1742, whose early by-laws,
much in advance of ideas which we learned in England,
give to “an}7 civil gentleman the privilege to read and
study there; whose earlier collections show that the excellent
spirit which governs it now is but the same spirit which
governed and founded it in colonial times, and which may
well be invoked as a guiding one for like institutions every-

* The old high, square pews were torn down, in the year named, and the
paved aisles, with many ancient tombstones, covered over with wood floors.

•j- Christ Church Hospital, belonging to “ the united churches of Christ
Church and St. Peter’s,” which were chartered by the Penns in 17G5. The
Hospital was founded A.D. 1772, by John Kearsley, M.D., but enriched by
Joseph Dobbins, Esq. It is west of the Park.

where and always; the spirit which, seeking to diffuse the
influence of the collection through every grade of society,
brings together for this common use “ works that illustrate
the truths and exhibit the progress of science, that have
won, or promise to win, for themselves the rank of stand-
ards in letters; a spirit which, not systematically excluding
lighter and more graceful forms of literature, if obnoxious
to no moral objection, has yet given preference to those
graver and more costly productions which few can afford to
purchase, but which many should feel bound to read; a
spirit which, above all, remembers that a great public library
is no fit receptacle for ephemeral literature; no dwelling-
place for the exaggerated descriptions of modern fiction
which pervert the taste, and its varnished impurities which
destroy morals.”

There stand — now laying yet new and more broad founda-
tions for usefulness — the old College, Academy, and Charity
Schools of Philadelphia, chartered in 1755, the glory of
William Smith, D.D.; which, notwithstanding the violence
of party in revolutionary times, — that gave to them their
present name of University of Pennsylvania, but added noth-
ing to their usefulness, — continue to this day to diffuse the
blessings which they were founded to dispense.

There stands in Fourth Street, with its date of 1752, in
strength that no devastating fires, nor any larums of ’change
have ever touched, or so much as brought to question, the
first fire insurance company founded on this continent,*
and little to the rearward of such companies anywhere; a
company which I think has scarcely ever disputed a loss,
and whose original, colonial, and still abiding principle of
organization — one for mutual protection alone, instead of
one for profit to stockholders besides — recent events, I should
think, would convince every one whose own perceptions or
reflections had not satisfied him of it already — was the only
principle for fire insurance, or indeed for insurances of any
kind.f

* The Philadelphia Contributionship for Insurance of blouses from Loss
by Fire; commonly known from its badge as the Hand in Hand.

f The speaker had reference to the awful tire of Chicago on the 8th, 9th,

Bearing a date of but seven years later, A.D. 1759, there
still exists, with its proprietary charter, the first successful
life insurance company ever established on this continent ;* *
one which lias seen many like institutions rise and fall at
home and abroad, but which, having for one hundred and
twelve years been diffusing comfort to the families of those
pious men who have looked to it for earthly relief, remains
at this day in a strength greater than it ever possessed before;
a company, like the other, founded on the idea of colonial
times, that such institutions should rest on the “mutual”
principle, and not oppose an interest to the very one which
they profess and are bound to protect.

There remains, too, in the “still air” congenial to its
pursuits — overlooking the ancient State House, in the edi-
fice where it claims prescriptive rights — the American
Philosophical Society, chartered by the Penns in 1769, the
great attainments and discoveries of whose members, in
higher science, made the city of Philadelphia honored over
every land in Europe, when of any other American city
scarce even the name was known. What other of “ the old
thirteen” can present such names in the history of physical
science as Bartram, and Bittenhouse, and Kinnersley, and
Godfrey, and Franklin? names that embrace profound dis-
coveries in botany, mathematics, astronomy, electricity,
mechanics, mensuration, and many kindred sciences. What
other legislatures than the legislature of our province gave
at the early day of 1769, and when our provincial means
were but limited, ,£200 that philosophers might observe
the transit of Venus in that day: or in 1771 rewarded the

and 10th of October, 1871, when very many other insurance companies were
severely crippled, and more than one made bankrupt wholly.

* The Corporation for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian
Ministers, and of the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Pres-
byterian Ministers. A prior Life Insurance Company, as we may fairly
call it, bad been established in Virginia in 1754, by the clergy of the Church
of England, as we now know by Dr. Perry’s invaluable labors. But it does
not, I think, survive to this day. See the Historical Collections relating to
the American Colonial Church, edited by the Rev. William Stevens Perry,
D.D. Vol. 1 (Virginia), p. 426.

constructor of an Orrery with a still greater sum, as a testi-
mony of its sense of the .abilities which he had brought to
construct a work which should display to its people the
glories of the solar system, and of the great Original whose
power it all proclaims.*

There in its ancient grounds, quiet and sequestered, |
stands the Carpenters’ Hall, passed daily, I suppose, by
twenty thousand people, thought of by few, entered, per-
haps, by none; the Hall of our old Society of House Car-
penters, tit counterpart, in the mechanic arts, of what “ The
Junto,” nearly contemporaneous with it, was in philosophy,
morality, and politics.^ The Junto leaves us no external
monument to bear its name. The carpenters may point
still to an honored one. Organized in 1724, this single
guild erected an edifice sufficiently large and sufficiently
commodious to have been selected in 1774 for its sessions by
one of the most august bodies that ever assembled upon
earth — the first Provincial Congress of America — that Con-
gress, the first prayer in which John Adams so eloquently
describes;§ and where the eloquence of Patrick Henry moved
the nation. This was its extraordinary glory. Hut I speak
not of that. It is as a record of the society of our early build-
ers that I here advert to it; as an illustration of the integrity,
the discipline, the skill, and the success which attended our
early mechanic arts. Visit this venerable place. Read its
constitution and rules, and you will comprehend all that I

* The Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania in 1768-9 appropriated £100
sterling to purchase a reflecting telescope to enable the Philosophical So-
ciety to observe this transit, and shortly afterwards another £100 to build
the requisite observatories. In 1775 it made an appropriation of £300 to
Dr. Kitten house, “as a testimony of the high sense which the house enter-
tains of his mathematical genius and abilities in constructing his Orrery. ”
See Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. i, p. 160.
f Back from the south side of Chestnut, below Fourth.

J A society of young men, formed in Philadelphia about 1727, for mutual
improvement, and described very interestingly by Dr. Franklin in his
autobiography. Godfrey was one of its members. Franklin's Works,
Sparks’s ed. Boston, 1840, vol. i, p. 82.

I In a letter to his wife. Works of John Adams, vol. ii, p. 368-9.

mean to speak of. Our ancient dwellings have many of them
disappeared. Robert Turner’s, and “Edward Shippey’s,”
and “Sam Carpenter’s” big houses, described by Mr.
Watson, have gone, ages ago. Anthony Duehe’s, Edward Pe-
nington’s, and Charles Willing’s more lately.* But enough
remain if we will visit them. They still stand in Front
Street, in Second Street, in Third, and in the lower parts
of Pine. Look at their imposing “dormers,” their elaborate
cornices, their stately doorways! Enter them ! Telling an
instructive story of those who built them, what yet better
one do they not then tell of those who dwelt there? Look
then, in that light, at these ancient domestic edifices! What
a historjr do they give of old Philadelphia! Why do we
never visit them? Mute chroniclers though they be, they
present, better than a score of books, domestic life and char-
acter among our provincial gentry. Deserted and degraded
though the}' are, it requires little imagination to restore, re-
people, and refurnish them. Look at their broad fronts,
their spacious halls, their numerous apartments, both large
and small; the rich carvings, the elaborate wainscots, the
stairways so easy of ascent, the provision everywhere for
every domestic person and every domestic thing; the open
chimney, where blazed from lire and wood the cheerful
flame, that after years of extinguishment now again, through
darkly, furnace-heated houses, gas and iron counterfeit —
and counterfeit in vain. Look at the space around, once the
well-kept garden, where children played, filled with flowers
and fruits, and diffusing to the overlooking mansion light,
and cheerfulness, and health. When you have taken in all
this, but not till then, you see before you “ the very wealthy
merchants,” of whom Mr. Burke was speaking in one of
those extracts which I have read to you ;f the men who
carried on that “great trade” with the English, French,

* Of this last, built in 1745 and surviving till 1850, at the southwest corner
of Third Street and Willinfg’s Alley (a site now occupied by the offices of
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company), there is a good account in Dr. Gris-
wold’s Republican Court, 2d edition, p. 308.
f Supra, p. 16.

■

Spanish, and Dutch colonies; with the Azores, the Canaries,
and the Madeira Islands; with Great Britain and Ireland;
with Spain, Portugal, and Holland; and who, from much of
it, derived “great profits.” These were their homes, and
the homes of their children. They tell that story truly.
But they tell a better one as well — a story such as no other
provincial city of America ever told so fully. They tell us
of families, men and women both, who sought to enjoy life,
not to dissipate it; who found pleasure in that which is
within, rather than in that which is without; who lived for
their own approval, more than for the eyes of others ; and
who, in providing for their own comfort, provided for the
comfort of their servants also.

I know not how it is. The Philadelphian who visits Italy
shall wend his way through filthy passes, in hunting out the
abandoned homes of the Vitelli and Orsini. lie shall mire
himself in the filth of the Ghetto to gaze upon the ancient
palace of the Cenci ; cursed, it seems, of heaven, and aban-
doned-to creatures as disgusting as it is easy to think that
human beings ever can become. He will climb its dangerous
stairways, and survey its dilapidated chambers. He will point
with pathetic gesture at its faded frescoes and departing gold.
The same Philadelphian will pass by without a thought the
homes of his own ancestors, fine and venerable structures;
not a few of them homes of men who were the founders of
a republic — blessed with gifts of wealth, and place, and for-
tune— all that tends to make of men a natural nobility; men
as virtuous, it may be hoped, as the Orsini or Vitelli; and
of women, who if we are to judge by their descendants of
their own sex here before us now, this Society I doubt not,
were it put this moment to a vote, would declare by acclama-
tion, were as fair as even Beatrice of the Cenci.

But why need I speak of churches, of colleges, of libra-
ries, of halls, or of houses in ancient, remote, and busy
parts of our city, and in regions of it where many present
can in any ordinary visits never find their way. Si monu-
mentum quceris , aspice! What a monument of the wealth,
the intelligence, the science, the humanity of our province

does the institution upon whose venerable walls we look —
upon whose ancient soil we stand — exhibit to this day; this
great institution whose corner-stone declares its history :

IN THE YEAR OF CHRIST

MDCCLV,

GEORGE THE SECOND HAPPILY REIGNING,

(fob he sought the happiness of his people,)
PHILADELPHIA FLOURISHING,

(fok its inhabitants ■WERE public spirited,)

THIS BUILDING

BY THE BOUNTY OF THE GOVERNMENT
AND OF MANY PRIVATE PERSONS
TV AS PIOUSLY FOUNDED

FOR THE RELIEF OF TOE SICK AND MISERABLE.

MAY THE GOD OF MERCIES BLESS THE UNDERTAKING :

an institution, the very grandeur of whose walls tells a
history; an institution so large in its dimensions, so admi-
rably conceived in its plan; so effectively set in operation,
with such wisdom and beneficence combined, that not-
withstanding the great growth of this city in all directions
since the day when it was founded, no new institution of the
same kind was for near a century afterwards, ever greatly
needed, or put into any operation.

Indeed we can hardly read the history of anything useful,
humane, good, great, or illustrious, in provincial times, and
not find the name of our city or our state connected with it.
In Pennsylvania was established as far back as 1690 the first
paper-mill in the provinces; here was printed at a later day
the first monthly magazine; here our own West, whose
genius and humanity alike, the building in which we are
now assembled was erected to honor, displayed in 1745 his

first ability." Here so far back in provincial clays that scarcely
a trace remains, Bartram, tbe greatest natural botanist that
the world has seen, established those botanic gardens which
made the wonder of the time, and procured for him the
title of American Botanist to George III. Here, first in
America, were taught to assembled classes, the wonders of
our frame which anatomy discloses; here founded those
schools which make it still our privilege to live in a city
where medical science is in advance of what is known else-
where. Here, in 1693, George Keith issued his remon-
strances by published essay against slaveholding; remon-
strances that were followed up in later days by Ralph
Sandeford, Benjamin Lay, ancl Anthony Benezet, and by a
line that never failed until the impressive act, passed by our
legislature almost in the same moment that we became an
independent state, for the gradual abolition of slavery within
our borders, was accomplished ;f prelude all of it to that
great ordinance for the government of the territory of the
United States northwest of the Ohio, — the ordinance I mean
of 1787, which finally declared :

“There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in
the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes,
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted:”

an ordinance to which we owe, no doubt, as a remote cause
the extirpation of the curse of slavery from our whole land.
And the excellent men of our colony did not seek to strike
off the fetters from our slaves only to leave them free. They
were men as wise as benevolent. They knew that before
liberty is to be desired for an}’ one, it is requisite to know
in what way it will please the freed man to exercise his new
possession; whether to make it a blessing to himself and
others or much the reverse of it to both. They, therefore,
devoted themselves — Benezet especially — to the education of

* He was then but seven years old. The building in which the Histori-
cal Society now meets was originally built to receive and exhibit West’s
picture of Christ Healing the Sick, painted by him as a gift to the Penn-
sylvania Hospital.

f Act of March 1st, 1780.

the blacks; to instilling into them, from childhood, the
principles of good morals and religion, and in giving them
such other instruction as that when they came to full age
they would prove an advantage to society rather than its
nuisance.

There it all stands! Religion, education, science, litera-
ture, the arts, domestic dignity and discipline, prudence,
charity! The whole conjugation of these excellent things
exhibited and coming to us in this day from our old colony
with a fulness and perfection which any other city of the
provincial times will seek in vain to show, and which is
hardly exceeded by like institutions or efforts of the repub-
lic anywhere! Surely the men to whom we owe these
things were great men in intellect, good men in principle,
loving men in heart! Ought not their names, and memo-
ries, and acts to be kept by their descendants in perpetual
freshness? If gratitude forgot its office, civic pride — per-
sonal interest itself, I was about to say — would perform the
duty.

I know not whether to call it the misfortune of our prov-
ince or the happiness of our state, that the lustre of these
colonial annals will be forever dimmed by the different glo-
ries of the Revolutionary and the Republican epochs; by
events, all of them immortal, and with every history of
which the name of Philadelphia will be indissolubly promi-
nent.

We speak much of the Congress of 177G. The whole
nation turns its eyes already to this city. The civilized
world will do so when the centenary comes.

The aspect in which popular apprehension chiefly or alone
beholds the men of 1776, is that of their assertion of popular
rights; their determination to maintain such rights at every
cost; their bold defiance of kingly power; their disregard
in the cause of liberty of every consecpience. And these,
no doubt, are great features of the picture. But there are
others which we must view with them, or we shall have no
/true estimate of the men of those times and of that Congress.

The same Declaration of Independence which was made

■

by the Congress of 1776 was made anew, with no great
change of words, by a convention of traitors and rebels in
1861; men who exhibited a defiance of the government
under which they had lived as bold as that exhibited by our
ancestors to the British crown; men who disregarded, in
the cause upon which they had entered, every consequence;
men, too, who endured not badly every consequence against
odds almost as great as that which met our ancestors. And
the resemblance holding good in these respects, the men of
Montgomery and Richmond fondly fancied that they had
done by the. United States in 1861, just what the United
Colonies had done by Great Britain in 1776. Their friends
in England said the same.

But vast was the difference between the men, and history
— no history better than .that of Pennsylvania — teaches
wherein the difference was. It is a difference which it is
well in these times to note; for it is a difference which made
the war of 1776 a just and glorious struggle, such as Heaven
itself would seem to favor, and leaves the insurrection of
1861 a foul, impious, and monstrous rebellion, wholly out
of the course of moral nature — such as hell alone could gen-
erate.

On the 15th July, 1774, there assembled in this city depu-
ties chosen from counties all through the province. Among
them were men, afterwards, some in the Congress of 1776;
some high in the army of the Revolution ; some among
those who framed the Federal Constitution. Braver men,
more patriotic men, men more truly devoted to the interests
of America, or more determined to maintain them than
many in this assembly, there were none throughout the
land. It is alike curious and profitable to read their reso-
lutions. I read a few of them to you from a contemporary
pamphlet.* Some, were passed unanimously, some by ma-
jorities only. These were passed unanimously:

* An Essay on the Constitutional Power of Great Britain over the Colon-
ies in America, with the Resolves of the Committee for the Province of
Pennsylvania and their Instructions to their Representatives in Assembly.
Philadelphia, 1774, pp. 127.

*■

“1. That we acknowledge ourselves and the inhabitants of
this province liege subjects of Ilis Majesty King George III, to
whom they and we owe and will bear true and faithful allegiance.

“2. That as the idea of an unconstitutional independence on
the parent state is utterly abhorrent to our principles, we view
the unhappy differences between Great Britain and the Colonies
with the deepest distress and anxiety of mind; as fruitless to
her, grievous to us, and destructive of the best interests of both.

“3. That it is therefore our ardent desire that our ancient
harmony with the mother country should be restored and a
perpetual love and union subsist between us, on the principles
of the constitution, and an interchange of good offices without
the least infraction of our mutual rights.

“5. That the power assumed by the Parliament of Great
Britain to bind the people of these Colonies ‘by statutes in all
cases whatsoever’ is unconstitutional, and therefore the source
of these unhappy differences.

“6. That the act of Parliament for shutting up the port of
Boston is unconstitutional; oppressive to the inhabitants of that
town; dangerous to the liberties of the British Colonies; and,
therefore, that we consider our brethren at Boston as suffering
in the common cause of these Colonies.

“9. That there is an absolute necessity that a Congress of depu-
ties from the several Colonies be immediately assembled, to con-
sult together and form a general plan of conduct to be observed
by all the Colonies, for the purpose of procuring relief for our
suffering brethren, obtaining redress of our grievances, prevent-
ing future dissensions, firmly establishing our rights, and restor-
ing harmony between Great Britain and her Colonies on a con-
stitutional foundation.

“ 10. That although a suspension of the commerce of this large
trading province with Great Britain would greatly distress mul-
titudes of our industrious inhabitants, yet that sacrifice, and a
much greater, we are ready to offer for the preservation of our
liberties. But in tenderness to the people of Great Britain as
well as of this country, and in hopes that our just remonstrances
will at length reach the ears of our gracious sovereign, and be
no longer treated with contempt by any of our fellow-subjects
in England, it is our earnest desire that the Congress should
first try the gentler mode of stating our grievances, and making
a firm and decent claim of redress.”

1667615

With what respect to the government “ at. home,” with
what deliberation, with what humanity, and on what solid
foundation did these men proceed ! They “ consulted much,
pondered much, resolved slowly, resolved surely.” How
unlike “Immediate Secession” and the mad shouts and
madder acts of 1861 ! It was not until all prospect of relief
from remonstrance had become hopeless, and a prospect of
relief from independence become plain; not until the evil to
be removed was sore and pressing and the good to be attained
unequivocal in nature and almost certain in result, that the
Declaration was made. And up to the last moment it was
made by many with infinite reluctance, and only because
they felt that- a grave and overruling necessity obliged them
to it; — in their own words, “impelled them to the separa-
tion.” These men felt the weight of moral responsibility
in all that they did; felt, in the language of a venerable citi-
zen of our own,* that war was a tremendous evil; that
come when it would, unless it came in the necessary defence
of national security, or of that honor under whose protec-
tion national security reposed — it came too soon, too soon
for national prosperity, too soon for individual happiness,,
too soon for the frugal, industrious, and virtuous habits of a
people, too soon perhaps for precious institutions; and that
the man who for any cause save the sacred cause of public
security, which made all wars defensive — the man who for
any cause but that — should promote or compel this ii i i a 1
and terrible resort, assumed a responsibility second to none
— nay, transcendency deeper and higher than any — which
man can assume before his fellow man, or in the presence
of God his creator.

When such men declared independence, it was time that *
independence should be here ; and independence was
achieved. They did not bring war and all its attendant
horrors, invasion, death, devastation, and bankruptcy, upon
a peaceful and most happy land, only to see at the end of it,
their general and his army captives, their president a fugitive;
to find the gracious government against which they raised

* Horsice Binney, in Congress, 183-1-5.

rebellion more powerful than before; the seats of legislation
once filled by themselves the possession of their slaves; and
the whole region where the}' live involved by their acts, in
such a condition that no man can foresee whether it is to be
governed in future times by bayonets or by black men.

Neither is it possible, I think, for any dispassionate man,
British or American, in this day, to read such a pamphlet as
that which I hold in my hand, and of which many like ones
are on our shelves — all in some senses ephemeral, and but
for the efforts of societies like our own destined to disap-
pear— without perceiving that the statesmen of that day did
but assert the exact principles of the British constitution as
laid down by the “ old Whigs” of England in 1688; I mean
by Mr. Lechmere, General Stanhope, Mr. Walpole, Sir Jo-
seph Jekyll, Lord Somers, and Lord Talbot. Only by a
study of this sort of literature can we perfectly comprehend
how it was that Lord Chatham — “ whose object was Eng-
land” as much as “his ambition was fame” — though he
came dying into the House of Lords to utter his last breath
against our independence, had exerted his whole energies
in defence of the American cause in all its vicissitudes and
aspects, and contributed more to its success than any man
living but Washington;* — comprehend perfectly the declara-
tion of Colonel Barre, “ The people of America are as truly
loyal as any subjects which the king has;” — though he
added, in prophetic vision, “But they are a people jealous
of their liberties, and who will vindicate them to the last if
ever they should be violated;” — comprehend especially
how Mr. Burke, of all men, should have been our constant
and consistent friend; Burke who thus discourses on the
subject of revolution of which we speak:

“The speculative line of dcmarkation where obedience ought
to end and resistance must begin is faint, obscure, and not easily
definable. It is not a single act or a single event which deter-
mines it. ^Governments must be abused and deranged indeed
before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must
be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in

* See the Quarterly Review, vol. lxvi, p. 190; lb. 2G3.

that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indi-
cate the reined}’ to those whom nature has qualified to admin-
ister in extremities this critical, ambiguous, and bitter potion
to a distempered state. Times, and occasions, and provocations
will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the
gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression;
the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power '
in unworthy hands ; the brave and bold from love of honorable
danger in a generous cause; but with or without right , a revolu-
tion will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good

Such were the statesmen — Chatham, Barrd, Burke — by
whom was maintained that opposition of the Colonies to
Great Britain which ended in the great Congress that gives
to Philadelphia the first of its modern glories, the Congress
of ’76. How unlike the Congress of Montgomery which
professed to be its imitator, the vain remonstrances of the
most gifted and eloquent son of the South has not left us
without a record.f

But the glory of 1776 — the rupture of political bands —
the subversion of ancient government — resistance and revo-
lution— is not our only glory. Equal and different fame re-
mains. For here was assembled the Convention of 1787, by
which was framed the Constitution of these United States; a
convention which numbered some of the greatest geniuses
for organizing government that the earth has yet seen. That
same hall which we name the Hall of Independence, was
the Hall of the Constitution as well. That same chair
which Hancock occupied in 1776, Washington filled in
1787. 1 Here, in our city, was reconstructed “the fabric
of demolished government here were reared “ the well-
proportioned columns of constitutional liberty;” here was
framed together “the skilful architecture which unites na-
tional government with state rights, individual security,
and public prosperity ” .... that “ more glorious edifice
than Greece or Pome ever saw.”

* Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. "Works, Boston eel.,
1839, vol iii, p. 49 ; and see Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, lb. 348.
f See Appendix II. J See Appendix III.

In this city — in yonder hall — it was all clone. The nation
gives Philadelphia a centenary in 1876. In thirteen y~ears
afterwards she will owe us another centenary still!

Here too first assembled the completed Congress of the
United States under the Federal Constitution;* and here
met every Congress — five in number — which sat before the
present century; the great Congresses by which were chiefly-
framed those organic laws (as in one sense we may call them),
by which the vast and complicated system of the Federal
government was shaped, and put in action, and in obedience
to which it still continues to move.f And with those Con-
gresses came their crowning glory, the presence and the
Presidency of Washington. Of nine sessions of Congress
held during his term, seven were held in this our city-.

Of those great deeds which give immortality to our land —
deeds with whose fame the earth is full, and whose conse-
quences seem destined, “like a sea of glory, to spread from
pole to pole” — this, our state, and this our city, was the birth-
place. Runnymede itself can be more easily forgotten, and
with less ingratitude be disregarded by the people of Eng-
land, than can Philadelphia by the people of these United
States. Shame upon any Congress, forty-second or forty-
second hundredth, if heaven shall give the nation such, which
shall dare by any slight to do irreverence to her! It is not
us that they’ offend but the heroes of ’76; the statesmen of
’87, the legislators of ’91 to ’99, the very image and spirit of
Washington. For “here was his home; here he resided
for a longer time than he did in any other place, his own
Virginia excepted ; here six most important years of his life
were passed; here, the house in which he lived is shown ;
the seat in which he sat in church still pointed out; persons
here yet survive who have felt the touch of his hand upon
their childish heads; from our city he gave forth that great

* Rhode Island, the last of the old thirteen states to ratify the Constitu-
tion, did not do so till May 29th, 1790; and no senators or representative,
came from her till Congress had left New York.

| The first two sessions of the first Congress were held in New York.
The third session of it, and all the sessions of all subsequent Congresses in
the Presidency of Washington, here.

paper in which he bade his countrymen ‘farewell/ and this
spot will be among the last where his memory will cease to
be revered, and the last where the love of that Union and
that Constitution which was so near to his great heart will
ever be forgotten.”*

Men and women of Philadelphia, if we expect that others
shall not forget these things, we must see to it that we for-
get them not ourselves. By that blessing of Heaven which
is promised to thousands in the righteous, the glories of
our state and city are not the glories of the past alone; the
glories of Venice and Verona, of Pisa and Pavia; of Ba-
venna and of Pome — “ an existence gone by, where shadowy
forms rehearse in silent show the deeds that once resounded
or which elsewhere resound !” Our state and our city have
been ever going onwards in wealth and fame. Gettysburg
triumphs over Germantown. The power of our state has
become that of an empire. The boundaries of our city have
been enlarged till miles, unless by scores, can’t measure
them ; our population has increased even beyond what
Burke in a former century considered marvellous. The
foreign commerce which he described, has been succeeded
by manufactures which transcend it an hundred fold. The
“ eight or nine thousand wagons, drawn each by four horses,”
which brought the product of our provincial farms to the
city markets, are as nothing in comparison of the mighty
engines and the polished roads which hi}’ at our doors the
products of a continent; and, the city of William Penn is at
this moment the seat and centre of a power which turns into
very branches of its roads the railways which other states
have vaunted as their mighty “trunks;” a power which
amazes all around us by its sway.

But this is “the active,” “the striving,” and, of much
that preceded it, “ the forgetful,” “ the destructive.” In
this career of external prosperity, there is nothing that we
revere. The home of William Penn has been levelled with

* See Griswold’s Republican Court, 2d edition, 1S59, p. 253.

the ground.* The ancient court-house, where Benjamin.
Franklin sat in judgment, and Andrew Hamilton poured
forth his eloquence, has been torn, stone from stone. f The
very highways pass over its foundations ; no man can detine
its site; nothing remains to tell so much as that it ever was ,
but the fading emblem of departed royalty which hangs on
yonder walls. J These, indeed, were the monuments of very
ancient times. But places which our own recollections
should have hallowed, are reverenced as little. We have
laid our sacrilegious hand upon the very home of Washing-
ton.! Even that sacred abode is degraded to pursuits of gain.
Its front and rear walls gone, and little left remaining but
portions of the interior work, the stairways, and the ceilings!

Our ancient Senate chamber remains, indeed, a spacious
chamber still; but changed and turned to common use.
Hundreds enter it daily; but who in the crowds and con-
flicts of a county court room is awed by any recollection that
in that same hall — in the presence of an assemblage not
less august than was convened for the first occasion — Wash-
ington was a second time inaugurated President ;|| that there

* I refer, of coarse, to the venerable house best known as Penn’s, and
where he long resided — built originally I think for his dear friend “Sam.
Carpenter” — in Second Street, at the south corner of Norris’s xYllev. The
house in Letitia Court which Penn owned still stands, though much de-
graded. It at least ought to be secured.

f Dr. Franklin certainly sat as a judge of the Common Pleas of Phila-
delphia in A.D. 1749, how long before and after I cannot affirm. He says
that he withdrew from judicial duties in consequence of “finding that more
knowledge of the common law than he possessed ” was necessary to enable
him to act “with credit” in that capacity. Works, Sparks’s ed. Boston,
1840, v ol. i, p. 162.

In Brown’s Forum, vol i, p. 582, there is a bill of exceptions signed by
him, Edward Shippen, Joshua Maddox, and other justices in the case of
William v. Till, June Term, 1749.

J An ancient painting with the royal arms of England and the letters
A. R. (Anna Regina), formerly hanging, as tradition attests, over the bench
of our ancient Common Pleas, &c., in the old court-house which stood in
the middle of Market Street, at the west line of Second, erected in 1707,
and destroyed with the demolition of the old market houses some few years
ago.

\ No. 524 Market Street, now converted into a shoe store, and occupied
by Conover, Dorlf & Co.

[( March 4th, 1793. When President Washington was inaugurated at

for eight years, in the apostolic era of our country, assembled
the Senate of the United States; the Senate of Ellsworth
and Cabot, and Schuyler and King, and Morris, and Ross,
and Bingham, and Stockton, and Izard; the* * patriotic White
its chaplain ? Who, now entering it, bethinks him that in
that same hall it was, and of senates there assembled, that
John Adams has declared that he had been “an admiring
witness of a succession of information, eloquence, and in-
dependence which would have done honor to any senate in
any age.”*

And our ancient Hall of Representatives ! how changed
in form! how marred in use and aspect! divided into many
pieces and used for everything! Who, in the scenes of
a Quarter Sessions, amidst the trials of thieves and burglars,
or in a Common Pleas, which has recently displaced the dis-
gusting jurisdiction, — who among the petty wrangles of a
tax collector’s office — could believe, if he were told it, that he
was within those same walls where Fisher Ames defended,
in his memorable speech, Washington and the treaty of Mr.
Jay; within those same walls where John Marshall vindi-
cated the action of the Executive under it, in that conclu-
sive argument which fixed the eyes of the nation at once
upon him, and showed to all how fit he was for that highest
honor with which he was afterwards adorned ; within those
same walls where Dexter, and Sedgwick, and Trumbull, and
Tracey, and Williams, and Benson, and Boudinot, and Sit-
greaves, and Harper, and Smith of South Carolina, gave
force and dignity to all around them; and the pious Ashbel
Green invoked the guidance of Heaven upon their counsels
and their acts ?

What irreverence do we not do to even greater memo-
ries, with which that place should still be redolent!

It was there, as the old debates in Congress tell us, on
the 4th of March, 1797, when John Adams wa3 about to

New York, of course, the government had not been organized. On the
second inauguration, the Heads of the Departments, the Foreign Ministers,
and other persons of state we know were present. Benton’s Abridgment of
the Debates in Congress, vol. i, p. 387.

* Benton, vol. ii, p. 8.

make bis inaugural speech — the Senators and Representa-
tives of the land being assembled with unusual state and the
ambassadors of foreign nations glittering with the ensigns
of royalty around — that the modest "Washington, having on
that day closed his long and splendid public career, entered
the assembly, “and taking a seat,” says the record, “as a
private citizen, a little in front of the seats assigned for the
Senate, which were on the south side of the house,” showed
by his presence the respect which he deemed that propriety
made decorous to the successor in his office.* And when, in
1798, Congress had ordered that the nation should be armed
by sea and by land against the aggressions of insulting and
rapacious Fiance, he came again to this city — summoned
by the voice of the nation from those scenes which he so
“dearly loved,” and from that “peaceful abode” in which
he had consoled himself with the prospect of “closing the
remnant of his days ” — it was in that same hall that he showed
himself, in state, “Lieutenant-General of all the armies
raised or to be raised for the service of America;” his Secre-
tary Lear, and his trusted Major-Generals, Hamilton and
Pinckney, beside him ; ready, though “declined in years” —
for the sake of that country to whose welfare he felt it was
incumbent on every person of every description to contribute
at all times — “to enter upon the boundless field of public
action, incessant trouble, and high responsibility. ”f Yet

* How charmingly Marshall describes the scene :

“The sensibility which was manifested when General Washington entered, did not
surpass the cheerfulness which overspread his own countenance, nor the heartfelt
pleasure with which he saw another invested with the power and authority that had
so long been exercised by himself.”

| See his beautiful and affecting letter of July 13th, 1798, from Mount
Vernon to President Adams, accepting the appointment of Lieutenant-Gen-
eral, which the President had requested Mr. McHenry, then Secretary of
War, to go to Mount Vernon and urge him to accept. Benton, vol. ii, p.
177.

The debates in Congress, under date of Saturday; December 8th, 1798,
contain this entry :

“At 12 o’clock, Lieutenant-General Washington, with his Secretary, Col. Lear,
Major-Generals Pinckney and Hamilton, entered the hall arid took their places on
the right of the Speaker's chair. The British aud Portuguese Ministers with their
secretaries had places assigned them on the left.” Benton, vol. ii, p. 327.

more, and lit conclusion of the record of that place. When
death had closed the long and virtuous career, and John
Marshall, as the old congressional records tell us, had an-
nounced, “in a voice that bespoke the anguish of his mind,”
the sad event — there, within that hall, on the 19th December,
1799,* in that tribute in which he proposed that “ the grand
council of the nation should display those sentiments which
the nation felt,” — in that hall, I say, were first heard the
words from that hour forth familiar to the world, inseparable
from the name of Washington, predicable of no other name,
and as that name imperishable — “First in War, First in
Peace, and First in the Hearts of his Countrymen.”

A stranger asks, “Where sat in earlier days — those days
when Jay and Ellsworth presided on that bench — where sat
the Great Tribunal of the Hat ion — ‘the more than Amphic-
tyonic council?’” But who can show him, surely, where? Yet
here it did sit — and I suppose, in that same room we now call
the Mayor’s Office — for nigh ten years; and through a term
which embraced more chief justices, Jay, Rutledge, Cushing,
Ellsworth, than have ever sat in the same tribunal since!
Here were adjudged some of the greatest cases that were
ever passed on even by that great tribunal. Hither it was,
and here to argue, that Alexander Hamilton and Samuel
Dexter and John Marshall came; and saw? but conquered
not, or conquered rarely, our own, the elder Sergeant, Brad-
ford, the Tilghmans, Lewis, Ingersoll, Rawle, and Dupon-
ceau ; both these last successively our honored presidents.
And what arguments, indeed, were these! arguments such
as a member of that court himself describes; characterized
“ by a depth of investigation and a power of reasoning equal
to anything he had ever witnessed, and some of them adorned
with a splendor of eloquence surpassing what he had ever
felt before; under whose influence fatigue had given way,
and by which the heart had been warmed, while the under-
standing had been instructed. ”f

* Benton, vol. ii, p. 434.

f Mr. Justice Iredell, of North Carolina, speaking of arguments made be-
fore him (Mr. Marshall being one of the counsel, I suppose), in Ware v. Hyl-
ton, 3 Dallas, 257. The Supreme Court sat in Philadelphia from February

These, citizens of Philadelphia, are the halls that we have
desecrated; the men, the memories, the events that we dis-
honor.

The chief public monuments of our once Federal metropo-
lis— the chambers which should have been ever telling that
here in better times than these — assembled, the Congress of
the United States and that higher court which, on issue
raised, may validate its acts or annul them all — are converted
into places where complaining people pay reluctant imposts;
where petty suits are litigated or felons tried for crimes!*

In point of decency, is not this disgraceful ? In point of
selfish interest, is it not most stupid ? What would we think
of Stratford-upon-Avon if she were to demolish Shakspeare’s
house to erect upon the spot a corn exchange? of Edin-
burgh, if she should convert old Holyrood, to shops, that
bring a “ a splendid rent?” of London, if thinking to make
her Tower “ serviceable,” she should convert it to “ poro-
chial” offices, and a throne-room for Beadle Bumble?

Is nothing of use at all but what we can weigh or meas-
ure or count? Are not sentiments and affections a part
of our nature as well as instincts and ambitions? What
curious instruction, what profitable teaching, would it not
minister to this licentious age, if we could yet view in its
modest simplicity the home of William Penn! How viv-
idly would the difference between the legislature of Pennsyl-
vania, in the days of Governor Blackwell, and that same body
in the days of Governor Geary, impress us, could we pass

Term, 1791 , till the same term of 1800, inclusive. Mr. Hamilton argued (suc-
cessfully) against Mr. Ingersoll, Hylton v. The United States, 3 Dallas,
171; Mr. Dexter argued unsuccessfully against Mr. Mifflin, Brown v. Van
Braam, lb. 344; Mr. Marshall (unsuccessfully against Edward Tilghnvan,
W. Lewis and Wilcocks, who succeeded in reversing the judgment below),
Ware v. Hylton. Ib 257. Our own old bar were arguing in the Supreme
Court continually while it sat here. And it deserves a mention in horior of
that generation of the Philadelphia bar which succeeded to the old bar of
which I have been speaking, that though, with the departure of the seat of
government in 1800, its fame could no longer radiate like that of the former
generation from an artificial centre, it did equally radiate or more from a
centre which the ability, learning, and virtue of its members, long made a
centre of professional superiority.

* See Appendix IV.

from the halls of the capitol at Harrisburg to our own prim-
itive court-house, which I have referred to as demolished,
and where, in the earlier days of the province, our legisla-
tures were assembled! What honor should we not have in
the eyes of nations — what conscious dignity in our own —
had we preserved to this day the home of Washington, as it
was left by him when he took his sad and final leave of us
for his resting-place upon the Potomac ! if we could show
our ancient “ Congress Hall,” just as May 14th, 1800, closed
upon it, when with the departure of the Sixth Congress of
the United States it was left to us, filled with the odors of
political integrity and of private virtue ! Who in these days
of degeneracy would not thither resort, as to a sanctuary,
and seek in the presence of the spiritual band whom mental
vision there would surely summon up, strength and encour-
agement in the trials which still beset our country! And
what a band it was ! I have named to you its leaders, friends
of Washington, all ; “men who carried into public life the
morals and the sentiments that give grace to private charac-
ter; who joined sincerity and directness of personal deport-
ment with effectiveness and force of political action, who
gained the outward without loss of the more sacred excel-
lence within.”

We have rescued Carpenter’s Hall from the desecration
to which it was long delivered. We have made again a
sacred one the place in which Independence was declared
and the Constitution framed. Let us demand that when
our new municipal buildings are finished, our city restore
to the people and the nation old Congress Hall, which it has
captured and defiled — restore and forever preserve it as it
was; that our own people and all the world may see that we
value our ancient dignity no less than our present strength,
and that all who visit it, may derive the refreshing influence
of the great and virtuous men who once assembled there.

What, then, our Society asks for is, that past and present
stand united; that each may have its place, priority, degree.
The present will very soon become the past, and if we ex-
pect that we ourselves and all that marks our time shall not
be soon swallowed by oblivion, we must teach those who

come after os how they should remember. I have adverted
to the fact that in this city, it was first upon this continent
proposed to print the Holy Scriptures, and that here, too —
first anywhere upon the earth — the liberty of the press was
successfully maintained against arbitrary power. I have
said that in Pennsylvania was established, as far back as
1690, the first paper-mill in the British provinces. The evi-
dence of all these facts is now patent and irrefragable. On
the wall before you hangs the evidence of the first one.*
In the hall of the Historical Society of Hew York, put there
by myself, remains the evidence of the second. f In the fire-
proof closets yonder, of our own Society, remains a manu-
script, the proof of the third. J All three facts were of course
known a hundred and fifty years ago, but for at least a hun-
dred and fifty years the knowledge of all had departed from
the earth. And the honor which in every one of the cases
belonged to us, was in the first one transferred to Massa-
chusetts^ in the second to Hew York,|| and in the third to

* On the walls of the Society was hanging the printed “ Proposals,”
dated “Philadelphia, the 14th of the 1st month, 1688,” by "William Brad-
ford, “ for the printing of a large Bible.” See them, Appendix Y.

f See An Address, delivered at the celebration, by the lSTew York Historical
Society, May 20th, 1863, of the 200th birthday of William Bradford, p. 52.

J This manuscript is entitled, “ Historical Sketch of the Kittenhouse Paper
Mill, the first erected in America,” by Horatio Gates Jones; a paper which
it is desirable should be preserved in a printed form. It is a curious and
valuable essay.

\ In 1860, Hr. E. B. O’Callaghan published, under the auspices of Mr.
James Lennox, of New York, his beautiful and valuable work entitled, “A
List of Editions of the Holy Scriptures and Parts thereof, printed in Amer-
ica previous to 1860; with Introduction and Bibliographical Notes.” In
this work, p. vi, he says :

“ Cotton Mather was undoubtedly- the first who projected the publication, in
America, of an edition of the Bible in English. He commenced the preparation of
what he called the Biblia Americana about the year 1095, and having spent fifteen
years in collecting and compiling notes, comments, and expositions, announced, in
1710, the completion of his work in an advertisement at the end of one of his Tracts
(Bonifacius, printed in 1710), hoping ‘ that the glorious Head of the Church will stir
up some generous minds to forward an undertaking so confessedly worthy to be prose-
cuted.’ But this hope was not realized. Ho printer could be found in the colonies
to hazard such an enterprise.”

|| John Peter Zenger, of New Yrork, or his counsel, has been the man who
it has been constantly stated first maintained the press against the tyranny
of government. This is not true, as the record deposited in the New Y"ork
Historical Society and the Trial of Bradford, mentioned in Brown’s Forum,
vol. i, p. 280, show.

New Jersey.* By the merest accidents imaginable, in each
case has the truth been recently discovered and justice done
through the aid of members of this Society to the men and
to the place to whom and to which it was clue.f

I advocate no selfish exaltation of Pennsylvania. Far
from it. The glory of one state is the glory of all, and the
more that others can show how near their title to honor
approaches ours, the prouder shall we all feel of our com-
mon land. Nor, coming to narrower limits, would I re-
gard our city as the Athens of this age. Cities, like men
or women, may wrap themselves in vanity while the ridi-
cule of all who see attends their self-complacency. But,
for all this, it is not less true that “a proper confidence
in One’s own standards, in one’s own judgment, in one’s
own abilities, is so important for the full development of
intellectual capacity and social dignity and happiness, that
it ought to be considered a duty of every one who holds
the place of a guide or teacher to implant it in the subjects
of his care, whether communities or individuals. The
breast of an apostle — he who forbids any one to think more
highly of himself than he ought to think, or to be wise in his
own conceit, § who ranks “ boasters” with “ blasphemers, ”|| —
yet swelled with conscious pride at the recollection of an
honorable birthplace; and, in virtue of such a birth-

* Mr. Isaiali Thomas, in his History of Printing (vol. ii, p. .95), refers to
a paper-mill at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, whose histor}' he does not trace
further than to 1728, as not altogether improbably “ the first built in British
America.”

f The “ Proposals” of Bradford, in 1088, to print the Bible were discov-
ered in taking to pieces the binding of an ancient book, where they made
an inner lining-paper. See the “Address” quoted supra, in note J, p. 42.
The other paper — the one deposited in the New York Historical Society,
and of which a copy is given at p. 49 of the same Address, as also in Brown’s
Eorum, vol. i, p. 276 — was discovered by a youth, in some rubbish at Chester,
who, on the recommendation of some person to whom he had shown it,
brought it to me. The foundation of the old paper-mill was discovered,
and so its history traced, by Mr. Jones, in Paper-Mill Creek, a branch of the
"Wissahickon.

| Literary Criticisms, by H. B. Wallace, p. 2.

\ The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Homans, xii, 3, 16.

|| The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy, iii, 2.

place, asserts Lis privilege beyond the rest. “ I am a man
which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia; a citizen of no
mean city : and I beseech thee suffer me to speak unto the
people.”* Did Paul bewray his teachings? Did he exalt
himself? or smite any man on the face? Assuredly not.
IIow could he assert such a distinction and not prefer in
honor those by whom it was achieved for him ? how assert
it and not make his fellow-citizens partakers with him ? how
assert it and not preserve an inheritance which, as little as
any of this earth, would not fade away, for every citizen of
the same place who should come after him ?

Our Society might, indeed, adorn its . very portals with
commands of Holy Writ. What in all its objects does it but
obey what the great lawgiver of old taught the people whom
he so long governed and instructed ; taught at the close of
life — in the repetition of the law — the deateronomy f — where
he speaks more to people than to priesthood — and when in
that prophetic vision which was vouchsafed to him in more
exactness than before — his awful solicitudes for the future
condition of his nation so largely engaged his final exhor-
tations: “ Remember the days of old. Consider the years
of many generations. Ask thy father, and he will show thee ;
thy elders, and they will tell thee.”

Our Society, therefore, in showing to every Philadelphian
wherefore and wherein he should value his birthright, teaches
him that which it ought to teach. In collecting here, and
seeking to preserve in influence and honor — in collecting
and preserving where all can see them, and each derive
from the sight a virtuous strength — the names, the deeds,
the fame of such men as I have referred to — provincial, rev-
olutionary, republican alike, — the Historical Society of Penn-
sylvania performs a high, and serviceable, and patriotic office
to the city, to the state, and to the nation.

Our Society is not founded in the tastes of antiquaries,
but in the philosophy of statesmanship. It seeks to main-
tain our civil rights, aud our freedom, and our privileges,

* The Acts of the Apostles, xxi, 39.
f Chapter xxxii, verso 7.

by calling to the aid of the artificial institutions of govern-
ment, the warmth of our affections; “to fortify the fallible
and feeble contrivances of our reason with the power of
nature’s unerring instincts.” It proceeds in this its highest
aspect, but yet its true one, according to those principles
which the great orator, and poet, and statesman, — whom I
have quoted more than once already, but whom no American
can easily read too much, or remember too well— rt caches us
in the greatest of his works,* lie at the foundation of his
own government; as they must ever lie at the foundation of
every other government that is great, stable, and free.

Listen once more to the inspired Burke as he replies to
the sophisters and sans-culottes of France ! Thus speaks he
with the tongue of angels:

“From magna charta to the declaration of rights it has been
the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our
liberties as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our fore-
fathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity, . . without any
reference whatever to any other more general or prior right.
This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflec-
tion, or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is
wisdom without reflection and above it. A spirit of innovation
is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views.
People will not look forward to posterity who never look back-
ward to their ancestors. Besides,, the people of England well
know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of
conservation, and a sure principle of transmission; without at
all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition
free, but it secures what it acquires. . . . By a constitutional
policy, "working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we
hold, we transmit our government and our privileges in the
same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and
our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, and
the gifts of Providence are handed to us, and from us in the
same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just
correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and
with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body com-

* Reflections on the Revolution in France. Boston edition, 1839, vol. iii,
p. 52.

posed of transitory parts; wherein by the disposition of a stu-
pendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incor-
poration of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old,
or middle aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable
constancy, moves on or through the varied tenor of perpetual
decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus by preserving
the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we
improve, we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are
never wholly obsolete Always acting as if in the pres-

ence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading, in
itself, to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of native
dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably
adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of
any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble
freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a
pedigree, and illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings, and its
ensigns armorial. It has its gallery of portraits; its monumental
inscriptions, its records, evidences, and titles. We procure rev-
erence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which na-
ture teaches us to revere individual men, on account of their
age and on account of those from whom they are descended.
All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to
preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we
have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our
speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for the
great conservatories of our rights and privileges.”

Bat I detain you far too long'.

Fellow citizens, I have told you that the Society has six
hundred members. It should have six hundred thousand;
by which I mean that the number should be unlimited.
Every inhabitant of Pennsylvania should feel an interest in
the state; and every citizen of Philadelphia, more peculiarly
should support an institution which in an especial way pre-
serves the historic honor of the city where he dwells. Some
can give money; some can give pictures, books or manu-
scripts; all can give good feeling and good words. “Let each
give what he can, and he will give precisely what he ought.”
And let him give it soon; and let him living give it, that
here, in this hall, he may, with us, himself long see and long

enjoy his bounty. I speak, of course, to those who take but
general interest in our objects.

To another class, more special, the virtuosi that I see, I
must also say a word, a little sermon — with the clergy’s leave. *

Collectors of manuscripts and books as rare — possessors
of historic portraits almost without a price — ye who spend
fortunes upon records of the past, and show with pride your
rich and curious stores — think ye that they who come after
you will share your zeal, your affection, and your care? I
tell you “ nay.” Manuscripts and books as rare; historic
portraits almost without a price, records of the past, your rich
and curious stores — these ye can bequeath to whom ye will.
But bequeath ye cannot, the zeal with which ye have col-
lected them, the care with which ye have preserved them,
the affection with which ye guard them. All of these, more
surely than any good which ye have done, will be interred
with your bones. Here then, collector, is the place in which
when you have done with them, you had best deposit those
treasures of the past you value. Here is an institution char-
tered to do the very thing which living you are always doing,
but which when dead you can no longer do. Here are men of
taste ; men who when, like imperious Caesar, you are dead and
turn’d to clay — when your vouchers will vouch you no more
of your purchases, and you have your fine pates full of fine
dirt — will still take pains in preserving and showing your
collections; men who will learnedly, eloquently, gracefully,
pathetically, with sentiment, and, — with truth that your
epitaphs shall envy, — do what living or dying you could,
yourself, have never done— extol the virtues of the man who
owned them. Our Historical Society is, in short, “ yourself,
only more so.”

I must not conclude without thanking, for their counten-
ance, the numerous ladies who do us the honor to be present.

“ Our association,” the first President of the Society, in his
inaugural discourse of 1825, declared, “ is not confined to
one sex.” “Those to whom society is in every respect so
much indebted; who confer on life its finest felicities, and
wdio soften and allay the bitterness of adversity; whose at-
tainments in science are only less frequent because they arc

habituated to content themselves within the sphere of do-
mestic duties, but who have so often shown that occasion
alone is wanting; for advances to the highest rank of mental
improvement, — they are not excluded.” Without abridging
“ the endearing characters of guardians, and ornaments of a
sacred home,” — -the wife, the daughter, the sister may be
admitted and encouraged to assist us. Surely they to whose
zealous and untiring effort our nation owes the preservation
of Mount Vernon, when the men of the land would have
seen it sold to the highest bidder, and the Congress of the
nation were looking on without an effort to rescue it, can
never be deemed uninterested or inefficient ministers in any
institution which honors above all earthly names the name of
Washington. They, too, are the conservators of things at
home, and superior as they usually are to man in fineness of
affection, in closeness of attention, and retentiveness of
memory, they often cherish with care the memorials of the
past in which the absorbing engagements of men without,
destroy, to them, all interest. Cordially, therefore, and
gratefully shall we receive the co-operation of the women of
Pennsylvania.

“Let us then,” in the language of another, whose name
gives recent honor to a sister state, but whose ancestry in
times past belonged in part to ours,* “ let us all strive in this
our day and generation to collect every memorial of our fore-
fathers which time may have spared. Having rescued these
memorials from oblivion, let us place them, as far as may
be practicable, beyond the reach of accident. In this work
let us labor unceasingly till it be accomplished. Give the
future historian of our state no cause to reproach us, for
having left him nought but arid chronicles of events; but
let him find, among the fruits of our humble toils, mate-
rials, not only for faithful narrative, but for a philosophical
exposition of the conduct and principles, and institutions of
our ancestors.”

* William G-. Goddard, of Rhode Island, Political and Miscellaneous
Writings, Providence, 1870, vol. i, p. 26.

APPENDIX,

No. I.

THE OBJECTS OF THE STANDING COMMITTEES

AS SETTLED IN THE YEAR 1825, WITH THE NAMES OF THEIR RESPECTIVE

MEMBERS.

1. On the national origin, early
t-lie first settlers.

Joseph P. Norris,

Nicholas Collin,

Roberts Y aux,

Daniel B. Smith,

Zaecheus Collins,

Thomas P. Gordon,

difficulties, and domestic habits of

Jacob S. Wain,

Thomas H. White,

Charles Yarnall,

Reynell Coates,

John Singer,

John F. Watson.

2. On the biography of the founder of Pennsylvania, his family, and
the early settlers.

Roberts Vaux,
Samuel R. Wood,
Algernon S. Logan,
Ellwood Walter,
Charles Lukens,

Edward Penington,
Ellis Yarnall,
William Maule,
John Poulson.

3. On biographical notices of persons distinguished among us in
ancient and modern times.

William Rawle,
Roberts Yaux,
Joseph Sansom,
Clements S. Miller,

William Smith,
George W. Toland,
Samuel Morton,
Thomas Evans.

4. On the Aborigines of Pennsylvania, their numbers, names of their
tribes, intercourse with Europeans, their language, habits, characters,
and wars.

Peter S. Duponceau,
Benjamin II . Coates,
Thomas M. Pettit,
Joseph Roberts,
Henry J. Williams,

James J. Barclay,
Charles W. Thompson,
Isaac Norris,

T. Pennant Barton,
William II. Keating.

■

5. On the principles to which the rapid population of Pennsylvania
may he ascribed.

Charles J. Ingersoll, James N. Barker,

George M. Dallas, George Randolph,

Thomas A. Budd, ' James C. Biddle.

William B. Davidson,

6. On the revenues, expenses, and general polity of the provincial
government. -

John Sergeant, Samuel B. Morris,

Benjamin B. Morgan, William M. Meredith,

Joseph It. Ingersoll, William S. Warder.

Clement C. Biddle,

7. On the Juridical History of Pennsylvania.

William Tilghman, John Purdon,

Thomas Duncan, Thomas Bradford, Jr.,

Joseph Reed, Edward D. Ingraham,

William Iiawle, Jr., David Paul Brown.

8. On the Literary History of Pennsylvania.

Joseph Ilopkinson,
Robert Walsh, Jr.,
George W. Smith,
Gerard Ralston,

Thomas I. Wharton,
Edward Bettle,

John M. Read,

John Vaughan.

9. On the Medical History of Pennsylvania.

Thomas C. James,
Samuel Jackson,
J. Rhea Barton,
Benjamin Ellis,

Caspar Wistar,
Caspar Morris,
Isaac Snowden.

10. On the progress and present state of Agriculture, Manufactures,
and Commerce, in Pennsylvania.

Nicholas Biddle,
Stephen Duncan,
William M. Walmsley,
Thomas Biddle,

John Hare Powell,
Samuel Wetherill,

C. M. Pennock,
Reuben Haines,
Charles A. Poulson,
George Stewardson,
Roberts Vaux,
Samuel Breck.

No. II.

Reference was here made to the admirable speech of Mr.
Alexander II. Stephens, of Georgia, on Secession, in the Conven-
tion of the State of Georgia, when the secession from the Union
was there proposed for that state.

“ This step once taken can never be recalled ; and all the baleful and
withering consecpiences that must follow (as you will see) will rest on
the Convention for all coining time.

“When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by
the demon of war, which this act of yours will inevitably" invite and call
forth ; when our green fields of waving harvests shall be trodden down
by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweeping over our land ;
our temples of justice laid in ashes ; all the horrors and desolations of
war upon us, who but this Convention will be held responsible for it ?
and who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill-
timed measure, as 1 honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict
account for this suicidal act by' the present generation, and probably-
cursed and execrated by' posterity for all coming time, for the wide and
desolating ruin that will inevitably7 follow this act you now propose to
perpetrate.

“Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you
can give that will even satisfy yourself in calmer moments — what rea-
sons y'ou can give to your fellow sufferers in the calamity that it will
bring upon us. What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth
to justify it ? They will be the calm and deliberate judges in the case ;
and to what cause or one overt act can you name or point on which to
rest the plea of justification ? What right has the North assailed V
What interest of the South has been invaded ? What justice has been
denied ? and what claim founded in justice and right has been withheld ?
Can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong delibe-
rately and purposely done by the Government of Washington of which
the South has a right to complain ? I challenge the answer.

“While, on the other hand, let me show facts* (and believe me,
gentlemen, I am not here the advocate of the North, but I am here the
friend, the firm friend and lover of the South and her institutions, and
for this reason I speak thus plainly and faithfully for yours, mine, and
every other man’s interest, the words of truth and soberness), of which
I wish you to judge, and I will only state facts which are clear and un-
deniable, and which now stand as records authentic in the history of
our country. When we of the South demanded the slave trade, or
the importation of Africans for the cultivation of our lands, did tiny
not yield the right for twenty years ?

u When we asked a three-fifths representation -in Comm*.-* for « ur
slaves, was it not granted ? When we asked and demanded the return

of any fugitive from justice, or the recovery of those persons owing labor
or allegiance, was it not incorporated in the Constitution, and again
ratified and strengthened in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 ? But do
you reply, that in many instances they have violated this compact, and
have not been faithful to their engagements ? As individuals and local
communities, they have done so ; but not by the sanction of Govern-
ment, for that has always been true to Southern interests. Again,
gentlemen, look at another fact.

u When we have asked that more territory should be added, that we
might spread the institution of slavery, have they not yielded to our
demands in giving us Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, out Qf which four
states have been carved and ample territory for four more to be added
in due time, if you, by this unwise and impolitic act, do not destroy this
hope, and, perhaps, by it lose all, and have your last slave wrenched from
you by stern military rule, as South America and Mexico were, or by
the vindictive decree of a universal emancipation which may reasonably
be expected to follow.

u But again, gentlemen, what have we to gain by this proposed change
of our relation to the General Government ? We have always had the
control of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are united as we have
been. We have had a majority of the Presidents chosen from the
South, as well as the control and management of most of those chosen
from the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to
their twenty-four, thus controlling the Executive Department. So of
the Judges of the Supreme Court — we have had eighteen from the South,
and but eleven from the North ; although nearly four-fifths of the judicial
business has arisen in the Free States, yet a majority of the court have
always been from the South. This we have required so as to guard
against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us. In
like manner we have been equally watchful to guard our interests in
the legislative branch of government.

“ In choosing the presiding Presidents ( pro tern.) of the Senate, we have
had twenty-four to their eleven. Speakers of the House we have had
twenty-three, and they twelve. While the majority of the Representa-
tives, from their greater population, have always been from the North,
yet we have so generally secured the Speaker, because he, to a great
extent, shapes and controls the legislation of the country.

u Nor have we had less control in every other department of the Gen-
eral Government. Attorney-Generals we have had fourteen, while the
North have had but five. Foreign ministers we have had eiglity-six,
and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of the business which de-
mands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the Free States, from
their greater commercial interests, yet w’e have had the principal em-
bassies, so as to secure the world’s markets for our cotton, tobacco, and
sugar, on the best possible terms.

“ We have had a vast majority of the higher officers of both army
and navy, while a large proportion of the soldiers and sailors were

drawn from the Xorth. Equally so of clerks, auditors, and comptrollers
filling the Executive Department ; the record shows for the last fifty
years that of three thousand thus employed, we have had more than
two-thirds of the same, while we have but one-third of the white popu-
lation of the republic. Again, look at another item, and one, be assured,
in which we have a great and vital interest ; it is that of revenue, or
means of supporting government. Erom official documents we learn
that a fraction over three-fourths of the revenue collected for the sup-
port of government has uniformly been raised from the Horth. Pause
now while you can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and candidly
these important items.

“ Lea ving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars
you must expend in war with the Horth ; with tens of thousands of
your sons and brothers slain in battle and offered up as sacrifices upon
the altar of your ambition — and for what we ask again ? Is it for the
overthrow of the American Government, established by our common
ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded
on the broad principles of right, justice, and humanity ? And, as such,
I must declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been
repeated b3* the greatest and wisest statesmen and patriots in this and
other lands, that it is the best and freest government, the most equal
in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its meas-
ures, and the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men,
that the sun of Heaven ever shone upon.

“How, for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this,
under which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a century —
in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our do-
mestic safety while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and
tranquillity, accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unas-
sailed— is the height of madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I can
neither lend my sanction nor my vote.”

■ Ho. III.

The chair in which, by good tradition, Hancock sat as President of
the Congress of 177C, is still in Independence Hall. It has carved on
the top of its back, and gilded, the image of a sun half in the sea ;
whether rising f rom the sea, however, or setting in it is not so clear.
We know that Washington, as President of the Convention of 1787, sat
in this same chair, from an incident thus recorded in Mr. Madison’s
debates at the close of the Convention, and after the Constitution had
been adopted. Mr. Madison (Madison Papers, vol. iii, p. 1024) says :

“Whilst the last members were signing, Dr. Franklin looking towards

the President’s chair, at the hack of which a rising sun happened to be
painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it
difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. 1 have (said
he) often and often in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my
hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without
being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now at length 1 have
the happiness to know that it is a rising not a setting sun.”

It may be here remarked that Colonel Trumbull’s picture of the Dec-
laration in the rotunda at ’Washington does not represent the chair
which we know, on good tradition, that Hancock sat in. In mere ac-
cessories of the pictures, the artist doubtless took such freedom as gave
the body of his work the best effects.

It is to he regretted that we have no historical painting of the second
great event which gives glory to the Hall of Independence. The late
Mr. Rossiter, an artist of no mean accomplishment, had devoted
much time to the execution of such a work, which he entitled, “The
Signing of the Constitution.” His “ study ” was completed, and he
had discovered portraits of all the members of the Convention of 1787
(as of Major Jackson, its Secretary), with the exception, I think, of
three, not distinguished members, whose averted or shaded figures in
the picture, assisted to give it right effects. He visited ’Washington
soon after the close of the war which preserved to us the blessings of
the Constitution, and with a view of inducing Congress to order the
execution of the picture on a large scale for the Capitol, exhibited his
study along with some other historic sketches, in one of the rooms of
that building. Rut the nation was groaning with the weight of taxes
which the rebellion had caused, and the moment was not propitious to
the arts. His death soon after put an end to his patriotic design. But
what he did do ought not to be lost, and I trust that it may not be.
Any such work as Colonel Trumbull’s or Mr. Rossiter’s — the last, es-
pecially, as of a subject less dramatic than the former — is necessarily un-
grateful. But allowing for the immense difficulty of giving effect to a
picture of a body of men much in repose, where no female figure im-
parts grace and where impressions from color are largely excluded, Mr.
Rossiter’s study, with some variations from it which he meant to in-
troduce into the larger painting, would have given us, I think, a pic-
ture of value. Our city or our citizens should still perhaps look after it.

No. IV.

In wdiat place the seat of the General Government should be seems to
have been a matter of jealousy between different cities, even in the days
of the Provincial Congresses. ’When the Convention of 1787 met to
frame a new Constitution, and a bicameral Legislature and a Supreme

Court were spoken of, I suppose that Philadelphia saw that if she wanted
to be the seat of government, she would have to erect the buildings neces-
sary for its use ; for she had at the time none of her own suitable. With
the view chiefly, as I suppose, of securing the seat of government, though
not with an avowal of that purpose, the county built what was formerly
known as “Congress Hall,” at the southeast corner of Sixth and Chest-
nut, it being certain also that the building could be made useful for
county purposes even if Philadelphia should not be the seat of govern-
ment. The figures 1787, indicating, I suppose, the year of foundation,
are upon the front marble string-piece. The building, I judge, was
not finished in 1787 ; for the third session of the First Congress, which
session assembled here, sat, like the Provincial Congress of 1774, 1 think,
in Carpenters’ Hall.

From the “History of Congress ”* we learn that on the 6tli December,
1790, a letter from Messrs. Evan Thomas and Andrew Geyer, in behalf
of the Commissioners of the City and County of Philadelphia, was pre-
sented b}’ Mr. Morris to the Senate, offering “the County Courthouse
in Philadelphia to the representatives of the Union, for their accommo-
dation during their residence in the City of Philadelphia,” and that on
the following day the Senate ordered the following reply to be addressed
to the Commissioners:

Gentlemen:

The Senate have considered the letter you were pleased to address to the
Senate and House of Representatives on the 6th inst., and they entertain a
proper sense of the respect shown to the General Government of the United
States by providing so commodious a building as the Commissioners of the
City and County of Philadelphia have appropriated for the accommodation
of the representatives of the Union during their residence in this city.

I have the honor to be

Your most humble servant,

John Adams,

Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate.

A similar communication from the Commissioners was made to the
House of Representatives on the 11th December.

So,, also, for its own uses chiefly, but with a chamber designed for the
Supreme Court of the United States, the city, as I conjecture, performed
its part and built, about the same time, the “ City Hall,” as it was for-
merly called ; the building I mean at the southwest corner of Fifth and
Chestnut.

1st. As to the Congress Hall. We know certainly that the large
room, still existing in the second story, south side (now or lately Dis-
trict Court Room, Ho. 1, and previously the Circuit Court of the United

* Page 106.

States), was, as it now stands, the old Senate Chamber of the United
States. This is certain. The further and whole disposition of this
story appears, as I suppose, from the diagram annexed.

A, Senate Chamber ; V. P. being the Vice-President’s or Speaker’s seat.

B, the present Law Library, communicating with the Senate Chamber, and, in the judg-
ment of Mr. II. A. Sims, tlie’well-known architect, formerly a room of state, probably the
Vice-President’s. The cornice is very rich.

C, now the Last Room or Conversation Room of the Law Library. Formerly, perhaps, the
Secretary of the Senate’s.

I) and E, formerly, perhaps, Committee Rooms of the Senate ; or if the House of Representa-
tives had no rooms on the first floor, or in the “Row,” then existing, though in a form dif-
ferent from the present one, Committee, or Clerk, or Speaker’s Room of the House. That there
were, prior to the now existing divisions in the north part of the second story, rooms of the
same width as B andC, is shown by the course of the cornices in the little entries or “cut-
offs ” north of those two rooms, B and C.

There was no gallery originally to the Senate, its discussions not
having originally been public. After Congress came to this city and it
was determined that the Senate proceedings should be public, it was

Resolved , That the Secretary of the Senate request the Commissioners of
the City and County of Philadelphia to cause a proper gallery to be erected
for the accommodation of an audience.

A gallery was accordingly constructed on the north side. The entrance
was by a small stairway in a room north of the Senate and on the east
of the main building, since called the “ Conversation Room” or “East
Room” of the Law Library.

As to the House of Representatives.

This covered, according to the

best testimony, more than that part of the building lately used by the
Court of Quarter Sessions, and now sometimes by the Court of Common
Pleas. It came across the now existing entry from Sixth Street, and
occupied not onl}' it, but part of what is now the Tax Receiver’s room.
The following diagram indicates what I suppose up to 1800 was the dis-
position of this floor.

D, main entrance, on Chestnut Street, into a large vestibule.

V, this vestibule.

L, logia, entered from the vestibule by a green baize door, general entrance into the House
and logia for spectators.

$, Speaker’s seat. The fact that the Speaker looked east has been stated to me by a most
trustworthy witness, now in his ninety-third year, who heard Marshall speak in the Jonathan
Bobbins case, and who was aware of the now existing recess in the south wall, which seems
to have been there originally and to have made that the most proper place for the Speaker.
An engraved caricature, made January loth, 1793, which I have, indicates the same thing.

B, the four reporters’ places, indicated on this caricature.

V, large exterior vestibule, shown on a print of the State-house, supposed to be of about A.D.
1795, and probably connected with the Row offices, then existing in another form from now.

I think it probable that the northern part of the Congress Hall, espe-
cially the ground floor, may have been much altered more than once.
I suppose it possible that the now north wall of the Quarter Sessions,
which, in the opinion of Mr. R. L. Hicliolson, a very good judge, though
not an expert (and who thinks that there are no brick walls on the
second story*), is not an original wall, was put where it is soon after

* “Wooden pillars of ancient date, though how old I do not know, support
the whole second story from the ground floor, notwithstanding this brick

wall.

Congress went away, in 1800 ; the east and wrest sides of the remaining
space left north being converted into offices, with a passage between
them which led from the Sixth Street door to the Quarter Sessions.
The now existing Sixth Street entrance is said to be of more recent
date. It is probable that when that Sixth Street entrance was put in,
the two large rooms now on the north part of both the first and second
stories were put there by tearing these offices down. A skilful builder,
upon a view of the corpus , would soon settle a good many things. I
conjecture ignorantly every way, and- with no leisure just now either
to examine for myself or to ask those competent to inform me what, after
thorough examination, is their judgment.

2d. As to the Supreme Court of the United States . The original min-
ute-books at Washington show that the court, except during February
and August Terms, 1791, and the same terms in 1798, when nothing is
said which would indicate that it was held in a different place, always
met “at the City Hall.” Two days only are excepted. These are
March 14th, 179G, when the minutes mention that “pursuant to ad-
journment the court met in the Common Council Room of the Corpora-
tion of Philadelphia,” and Friday, August 5th, 179G, when it is men-
tioned that they met at “the State-house,” no cause for the change of
the place of meeting being mentioned in either case, and it having been
in both cases but for the day. The City Hall is the building at the
southwest corner of Fifth and Chestnut. There are two fine chambers
on the south side of that building. One, down-stairs, I suppose to have
been, in early times, the Mayor’s Court ; the one up-stairs, still retain-
ing much of its original style, I take to have been the place where sat
the Supreme Court of the United States.

For some other particulars about the Congress Hall I am indebted
to two letters, one from Mr. John McAllister, Jr., now' in his eighty-
sixth year, the other from Mr. Francis Gurney Smith, in his eighty-
ninth. An article from Poulson’s American Advertiser — one of a
number signed Lang Syne — is as valuable as either. The author was
Mr. "William McKoy, a teller in the Bank of Horth America, well
known to Mr. McAllister, to whom I am indebted for a copy of it. His
account being that of a man comparatively young, and who wrote
within less than twenty-five years of the time which he described, is
particularly valuable He died, Mr. McAllister tells me, January 28th,
1833. Mr. McAllister writes thus to me :

Philadelphia, February 19th, 1872.

My dear Sir:

In reply to your letter to my son, I give you my recollections of the
building at the southeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut Streets.

The door of entrance was on Chestnut Street, the same as is now the en-
trance to the Tax Receiver’s office ; south of this was the Hall of the House
of Representatives ; to the left of the passage, say on the east, was the stair-

case up to the Senate Chamber, which was the same room now or lately one
of the District Court Booms. The Vice-President had his seat at the south
end of the room, near the windows looking out to the State-house yard-; in
front of him sat Samuel Alvne Otis, the Secretary, then a handsome elderly
gentleman. The spectators’ gallery was a very narrow place, scarcely more
than six feet wide, extending from the east to the west end of the room ; it
was supported on pillars, and beneath this gallery was the only entrance to
the Senate chamber. When I was in the habit of going to look at Congress,
in 1708 and 1799 (when I was twelve„or thirteen years of age). Mr. Jeffer-
son was Vice-President. According to my present recollections he was tall;
bis face, as I can recollect, did not at all resemble the likeness of him as
given in Miss Bandolph’s book on the “ Domestic Life of Jefferson.” Very
few persons were to be found in the Senate gallery. I do not remember
that it had any chairs or seats of any kind. I recollect seeing William
Duane (father of W. J. Duane, Secretary of the Treasury under President
Jackson) on one occasion taking notes. He sat on one of the steps, and had
a book on bis knee to hold his sheet of paper. I cannot remember any of
the Senators whom I then saw, except Mr. William Bingham, a represent-
ative from our own State.

The Bepresentatives had on the first floor their room. I remember that
the spectators had a lobby of perhaps fifteen or twenty feet wide, but I think
the arrangement of the chamber was altered. There was, I believe, a mov-
able wooden rostrum for the Speaker and clerks, which, I think, was at
some time near the west end or side of the chamber, probably eight or ten
feet from the west wall, where were the fireplaces in which wood was burned,
but J think this wooden stage or rostrum was at another time at or near to
the south end of the chamber, and again I think I have seen it near the east
end. I heard John Marshall, of Virginia (afterwards Chief Justice), de-
liver. a speech of one or two hours in the case of Jonathan Bobbins, who
had been engaged in a mutiny on board a British ship of war, and who was
given up by President Adams on the call of the British government. On
that occasion John Marshall was defending the administration from the at-
tacks of the Democrats in Congress. During his speech I well remember
that he was not very remote from the Sixth Street wall. My father and
myself were in the lobby and near to Marshall. The speech occupied the
whole afternoon ; indeed, candles were lighted before the close of it.

There was no door on Sixth Street until long after Congress had left Phila-
delphia. When that was put in, a passage was made through to the east
end, occupying what had been the spectators’ lobby.

That the members of Congress might have access to their hall without the
use of the front door on Chestnut Street, there was a small vestibule erected
in the eastern passage. It was removed or taken down after Congress went
away. A view of it is introduced on an engraving of the State-house, which
I send you. When the building was altered this was removed, the wall of
the county building was disfigured, and it was plastered over, and the plas-
tering seems to have been carried up to the eaves. This plastering is now
to be seen.

I have no recollection about the Supreme Court of the United States, and
cannot tell you whereabouts it sat.

I regret that I do not remember more particularly the matters about
which you inquire.

I am, dear sir,

Very respectfully yours,

Johjst McAllister, Jr.

Mr. J. TV. Wallace.

Mr. Smith writes thus :

The building you allude to was occupied by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States. All the lower floor was used by the
latter, and the entrance thereto was by a vestibule on Chestnut Street. The
south part of the second floor was occupied by the Senate, and although I
have been in it, I do not know where the staircase was that led to it, nor do
I know how the north half of the building was occupied. I was in the
House of Representatives when John Adams was inaugurated President of
the United States. He delivered his inaugural address from the Speaker’s
chair on the west side of the room, and Jonathan Dayton, the Speaker of
the House, sat in the clerk’s seat below, General Washington sat on the right
of Mr. Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, Vice-President-elect, on his left. Gen-
eral Washington in a coach and four stopped opposite the door of Inde-
pendence Hall and walked through an avenue (formed by the crowd) to the
door of the ouse of Representatives, amid the hearty cheers of the people.
Two brass field-pieces were stationed in Potter’s Field, now Washington
Square. At twelve o’clock they fired a salute, and John Adams rose and
delivered his inaugural address.

Mr. McKoy, who, under the signature of “Lang Syne,” wrote, as I
have mentioned, for Poulson’s Advertiser about forty years ago, says
as follows :

Here is an inside view of the plain brick building at the southeast corner
of Sixth and Chestnut Streets. In this limited inclosure the representatives
of the people in former days viewed themselves as surrounded by uncommon
elegance and decoration in their discussions, they being “ fresh from the
ranks of the people,” actually so, and unused to legislative splendor other
than had been exhibited by the old Congress of 177f> in the east wing of the
State-house on Chestnut Street. Prior to their removal South they passed
unanimously a vote of thanks to the authorities of Pennsylvania for having
done the thing so very handsomely.

The House of Representatives, in session, occupied the whole of the ground
floor, upon a platform elevated three steps in ascent, plainly carpeted, and
covering nearly the whole of the area, with a limited “ Login ” or promenade
for the members and privileged persons, and four narrow desks between the
Sixth Street windows for the stenographers, Lloyd, Gales, Callender, and
Duane. The Speaker’s chair, without canopy, was of plain leather and
brass nails, facing the east, at or near the centre of the western wall.

The Senate convened in the room up-stairs, looking into the State-h )rse
garden. It has since been used by Judges Washington and Peters as the
Federal Court.

In a very plain chair, without canopy, and a small mahogany table before
him, festooned at the sides and front with green silk, Mr. Adams, the Vice-
President, presided as President of the Senate, facing the north. Among the
thirty Senators of that day, there was observed constantly during the debate
the most delightful silence, the most beautiful order, gravity, and personal
dignity of manner. The}7 all appeared every morning full powdered and
dressed, as age or fancy might suggest, in the richest material. The very
atmosphere of the place seemed to inspire wisdom, mildness, and condescen-
sion. Should any one of them so far forget for a moment as to be the cause
of a protracted whisper while another was addressing the Vice-President,
three gentle taps with his silver pencil-case by Mr. Adams immediately re-
stored everything to repose and the most respectful attention, presenting in
their courtesy a most striking contrast to the independent loquacit}7 of the
Representatives below stairs, some few of whom persisted in w'earing, while
in their seats and during the debate, their ample cocked hats, placed “fore
and aft” upon their heads.

A correspondent of the “Sunday Dispatch,” of 25th January, 1872,
signing himself “Sexagenary,” says, referring to the building:

The only entrance to the building was through the door on Chestnut
Street, now leading to the office of the Receiver of Taxes. Between 1815
and 1821 I resided within a square of Sixth and Chestnut Streets, and recol-
lect that the entrance on Sixth Street wras made during the latter part of
that time — and, I believe, the present staircase also. A passage ran from
the door on Chestnut Street to the room of the House of Representatives,
now the Court of Quarter Sessions. The late Thomas Bradford, Esq., occu-
pied a room on the west side of this passage as a law office about the year
1818.

JNTo. Y.

PROPOSALS FOR THE PRINTING OF A LARGE BIBLE,

BY WILLIAM BRADFORD.

These are to give Xotice, that it is proposed for a large house-Bible
to be Printed by way of Subscriptions [a method usual in England for
the printing of large Volumes, because Printing is very chargeable]
therefore to all that are willing to forward so good (and great) a Work,
as the Printing of the holy Bible, are offered these Proposals, viz.

1. That it shall be printed in a fair Character, on good Paper, and
well bound.

2. That it shall contain the Old and New Testament, with the
Apocraphy, and all to have useful Marginal NTotes.

■

3. That it shall be allowed (to them that subscribe.) for Twenty
Shillings per Bible: [A Price which one of the same yoltimn in England
would cost.]

4. That the pay shall be half Silver Money, and half Country Pro-
duce at Money price. One half down now, and the other half on the
delivery of the Bibles.

5. That those who do subscribe for six, shall have the Seventh gratis,
and have them delivered one month before any above that number shall
be sold to others.

6. To those which do not subscribe, the said Bibles will not be
allowed under 26 s. a piece.

7. Those who are minded to have the Comm on -Prayer, shall have
the whole bound up for 22 s. and those that do not subscribe 28 s. and
6 d. per Book.

8. That as encouragement is given by Peoples subscribing and pay-
ing down one half, the said Work will be put forward with what
Expedition may be.

9. That the Subscribers may enter their Subscriptions and time of
Payment, at Pheneas Pemberton's and Robert Ilcdls in the County of
Bucks. At Malen Stacy's Mill at the Falls. At Thomas Buclds House
in Burlington. At John Hasting's in the County of Chester. At Edward
Blake's in Hew- Castle. At Thomas Wood roof's in Salem. And at
William Bradford's in Philadelphia , Printer A Undertaker of the said
Work. At which places the Subscribers shall have a Beceipt for so
much of their Subscriptions as paid, and an obligation for the delivery
of the number of Bibles (so Printed and Bound as aforesaid) as the
respective Subscribers shall deposit one half for.

Also this may further give notice, that Samuell Richardson and
Samuell Carpenter of Philadelphia , are appointed to take care and be
assistant in the laying out of the Subscription Money, and to see that
it be imploy’d to the use intended, and consequently that the whole
Work be expedited. Which is promised by

William Bradford.

Philadelphia, , the 14th of
the 1st Month, 1688.

■ 1

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Full text of "A discourse pronounced on the inauguration of the new hall, March 11, 1872, of the Historical society of Pennsylvania, No. 820 Spruce street, Philadelphia"

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